Filling In the Blanks: Melange
by sidlerocks
Summary: Case files, GSR. December 2005. Rating for descriptions of the aftermath of violent crimes and accidents.
1. Introduction

**Author's comments**

* * *

_This cacophony takes place in December 2005, between "Still Life" and "Werewolves" but as is always the case with my stories, be prepared for spoilers/foreshadowing for any episode between "Cool Change" and "Goodbye and Good Luck". For me, CSI __**is**__ Sara's story, ends with her departure and will resume (briefly) with her return. Initially I thought there would be fewer spoilers in this tale as it's all original stories, not plots imbedded in the established storyline, but I'm coming to realize that that really isn't the case. There are also references to events in my previous stories, although it is not necessary to be familiar with them prior to reading this one. Incidentally, all of these plots are based on actual cases, many of which I worked on in a prior life. Yes, even that one—the paramedic who taught my EMT class a million years ago responded to that scene. I think that's when he stopped riding motorcycles… _

_I have tried to keep any statements of fact as accurate as possible, and for areas which are beyond my own expertise have used other forensic experts to help me in that endeavor. Any errors in these areas (or any other, for that matter) are clearly my mistakes. In addition, while I've been known to take a little license in speculating on the timeline of events to which the show only alludes, it is never my intention to present events or history which contradict the show's canon. Eight seasons are a lot of episodes, though, and the show itself is not always totally consistent, so I hope you will forgive me any deviations from the storyline or character backgrounds as presented. They are unintentional._

_As for disclaimers, I repeat, if anyone really thinks the studio attorneys are going to go after fan fic writers, well, unless you're writing fan fic about Bill O'Reilly (and who the hell would?) no one else is QUITE that petty. Or deluded. Or bored. Still, to make everyone happy, here are my disclaimers: I have been involved in the production of several scripted dramas. I am not involved in this one. If I were, you'd be seeing my input on the screen, not on a fan fic website. Plus the DNA lab would require fifty sperm in order to be able to generate a DNA profile like our crime lab here does, and fingerprint analysis would be done primarily by dedicated fingerprint examiners, not just computers. Ah, well. In any case, I have no rights to these characters, but I also have no profit motive and do nothing beyond, hopefully, increasing people's interest in the actual production (i.e. free advertising). _

_And for those who think that if we owned the rights to all of this, we'd be living high on the hog, not that there isn't a huge amount of money involved, but the reality is that the people who make this stuff work REALLY hard. Hundreds of people, most of who don't get rich on it. It's no wonder that Billy and Jorja wanted to take breaks. I've seen Jorja a couple of times since she left the show last year, and she looked really relaxed and happy, so I guess it was a good decision for her, no matter how bad for the rest of us._

_Anyhow, hope you enjoy. As with all my stories, this is posted as a complete work, __**not a WIP**__. No point in registering for Story Alerts—there won't be more (unless I realize that I really screwed something up and go back to fix it). If you like it, maybe do an Author Alert instead. I play in the garden of canon and these tales are set in the middle of story lines you already know. I don't need to tell you what happens next—you've already seen it._

_I also write to answer questions that arise in my own head, or in this case, to play a little. I've enjoyed writing the stories I've done, but at the moment I'm kind of out of questions and tales, so I might be finished for awhile after this one. Or maybe not—you never know. I do still have a whole folder of cases that didn't quite fit into this ditty…_

_BTW, I don't have betas, I have actual editors, consultants and collaborators who I'd stack up against any in the business. Soapy, CSIGeekFan, Neener, Firefly and now RedWolf—you guys are the BEST. Thanks!_

* * *

_**Filling in the Blanks**_

**Season 5  
**

**_Project Sidle_**

Set during _Spark of Life_ through _Committed_

(518-521)

**Season 6**

**_It Was a Sunday_**

Set during _A Bullet Runs Through It_

(607-608)

_**Mélange: Beyond this Point There be Werewolves** _

Set between _Still Life_ and _Werewolves_

(610-611)

**Season 7**

_**I'll See You Later** _

Set during _Law of Gravity_

(715-716)

* * *


	2. Author's note

10-06-2008

I'm currently reading a really fabulous WIP—Helen Pattskyn's _Torchwood _story "Forget Me Not" (/s/4567675/1/ForgetNotMe). It's everything I usually avoid in fan fiction, AU, set WAY in the future, brutal, sad, but it's incredibly well written, touching and gripping. (You do need to be familiar with _Torchwood_ and there are references to things from her previous stories, so there's a lot to read before you get to this tale, but believe me, it's worth the effort. And maybe by the time you read the rest of her stuff, this story will be finished so unlike me, you won't have to be obsessively checking your e-mail to see if there's a new chapter posted.) It was published a week ago and has (as of this moment) 51 reviews, almost all begging for her to write quickly.

Now, I've written four stories, and between them, they've gotten more than 23,000 hits. And a total of 37 reviews, many of them from the same wonderful reviewers. It occurs to me that as I post the stories as complete tales and don't beg for reviews, that there's not much incentive to comment. It would kind of be nice to know if I'm just spinning my wheels, though. I mean, I figure by the time you've slogged through somewhere between seven and 30,000 words, you must have an opinion. Mind letting me know whether you've enjoyed the stories or feel like you just wasted your time? Worth writing more?

Oh, and if you're a Torchwood /Janto fan, even if, like me, AU and crossovers are not your thing, check out Helen Pattskyn. I think you'll be glad you did.

BTW, if you've already ready my stories, I haven't updated the stories themselves, just added comments and made some formatting changes, so don't work too hard looking for the changes.


	3. Chapter 1

**Monday 12-12-2005 **

* * *

**Chapter 1**

* * *

Las Vegas Crime Lab night shift supervisor Dr. Gilbert Grissom strode into the lab break room as he did virtually every night, ready to hand out assignments to his team of crime scene investigators. For once, the holiday season was adding a little spring to his step. He was, as always, going to work on Christmas Day to allow most of his investigators to spend the day with family and loved ones, but this year he was taking off Christmas Eve, AND he had someone special to spend it with.

Actually, if he were honest about it, this was the sixth consecutive Christmas he'd be spending with Ms. Sara Sidle. He'd thought nothing of being together the first Christmas after she came from San Francisco and joined the Las Vegas Crime Lab. The holiday didn't matter much to him--it was a shift, like any other, and he and Sara had been the obvious choices to be on, as they didn't have any local family, and were deeply involved at the time in the Kaye Shelton murder investigation. He actually didn't even remember being aware that it _**was **_Christmas. The memorable-- no, unforgettable--event for him of that December didn't come until later in the week, when Sara spent the night sharing coffee and a quilt with him, documenting larval activity on a blanket-wrapped decaying pig.

The next two years their relationship had been seriously on the rocks. Although Grissom hadn't known it at the time, that following Christmas Sara had started going out with paramedic Hank Peddigrew. Grissom didn't even remember talking to her during the shift the first of those years. By the following year he'd been painfully aware of the relationship, and had just made a disastrous attempt at dating himself in an effort to prove that he didn't care—he still owed Brass for calling him in on the Todd Branson case, although he'd never admit how much he'd preferred working that scene with Sara over his aborted dinner at Pamplemousse, in spite of the fact that he'd missed dessert, and he loved their Grand Marnier Souffle…

The year after that he'd spent the shift trying to duck her, unsure what she would make of the entomology text he'd annotated and given to her as part of his initially shaky attempt to restore their damaged friendship, an endeavor he thought of as "Project Sidle".

Last year he and Sara had actually shared a quiet meal before shift, but they were both still reeling from the recent division of the night shift team, and it was a meal between friends: more than colleagues, but not yet the couple they'd since become. So this year, for the first time since his childhood, he was spending Christmas Eve with someone he loved, and he was putting a fair amount of effort into trying to make sure that it was perfect. If the thought that this would also be the first Christmas since the death of his mother added a bit of melancholy to the season, with Sara's help and support he'd gained enough time and perspective over the last six months for the holiday to be touched by sadness and not overwhelmed by grief.

His team looked up from around the break room as he entered. Catherine Willows sat on the couch shoulder to shoulder with fellow investigator Warrick Brown. Catherine was one of his best and oldest friends, a former exotic dancer whose determination to give her daughter a better start than her own mother had given her had turned her into one of the country's top blood spatter experts. Warrick, a particular favorite of Grissom, had pulled himself out of an impoverished and crime-ridden Vegas neighborhood few of his peers escaped alive. If his background and addictive personality sometimes led him astray, his recent marriage seemed to have settled him down. Initially the marriage appeared to have put a damper on his always-close relationship with Catherine, but whatever tension had been there had dissipated, and Grissom had fallen back into the habit of assigning them to work together.

Across the room, former Dallas hair and fiber analyst Nick Stokes was shutting down the video game he'd been playing with Greg Sanders, a talented DNA tech who had taken a significant pay cut to become the team's junior investigator. Nick's kidnapping, burial in an ant mound, and last minute rescue the previous spring had hit them all hard, but Grissom had noticed that over the last few months the Texan seemed less bothered by working in closed in spaces and wasn't trying nearly so hard to avoid his boss' office, where Grissom housed a variety of insects, including a small ant farm.

And then there was Sara: Sara who had tied his heart--and his gut--in knots from the moment he first laid eyes on her, hair pulled back in a pony tail, sitting in the front row of a lecture he was giving at a Forensics Academy Conference in San Francisco eight years earlier. Sara, whose quick sense of humor and quicker mind gave him a run for his money. Sara, who hid a history of unspeakable horrors she'd survived behind an almost impenetrable wall of privacy. Sara, who had hung in long enough to make it past his own carefully erected barriers, to become his best friend, his lover, his heart. Sara met his eyes as he entered the room, giving him a trademarked Sidle quirk of a smile, guaranteed to set his pulse racing.

"All right everyone. Assignments. Nick and Greg, you've got a 420 in an alley off of Fremont Street. Detective Vartann is at the scene."

He passed over a white slip of paper that Nick took after batting Greg's reaching hand out of his way. Nick walked to the door and paused, waiting for his younger colleague who was listening to the rest of the assignments.

"Catherine, you take Warrick and check out a 419/425 at UNLV."

Greg pouted a little.

"We get a straight up homicide and you two get a suspicious circs. Where's the fun in that?"

"Greg, you're welcome to try the fun in the unemployment line," Grissom warned him without looking up. Greg took the hint and followed Nick out of the room. Catherine took the second slip and led Warrick out in their wake.

"And we have?" Sara asked.

"We have a 430."

"We're going out on an animal bite?"

"Well, in this case the animal in question is an 18 foot python and his owner is dead."

"How stupid do you have to be to be killed by your own python?"

"That's one question we're probably going to get to answer." He paused, and his voice dropped. "Sara, are you really sure you don't mind working Christmas night?"

She looked up and met his eyes, smiling gently.

"Of course I'm sure. It means I get to spend Christmas with you, and it gives the rest of the team time with their families. I don't care where we are, as long as we're together. Besides, it's usually a quiet night. We'll probably spend the whole shift here in the lab, dodging Hodges."

"I heard Wendy Simms is working too. Maybe he'll be too busy chasing her to come looking for us."

"Maybe so. He does seem to have a thing for our new lab rat. She ever complained to you about it?"

"No. Do you think I should ask her?"

"I think Miss Simms is perfectly capable of fending for herself, but I'll keep an eye on David. Make sure he's not crossing the line. Last thing the lab needs is a sexual harassment charge." She pulled the last slip from his hand.

"Python, eh? Well, at least it's something different."


	4. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

* * *

Warrick drove through the UNLV campus with his window down, enjoying the unseasonably moderate night, heat on high to placate Catherine, radio turned low in deference to the sleeping students. At this late hour on a weeknight at the start of winter break there were some students moving around campus, but not much activity, at least until they pulled up to the entrance of Rambo dorm, where the revolving lights of ambulance and squad cars added an eerie surrealism to the scene. Officer Larry Mitchell met them at the door.

"Hey, Rick, Catherine."

"What have you got for us, Larry?"

"Wait'll you see. Come on, we're up on the sixth floor."

He led the way to the dorm elevators and then out into a quiet sixth floor corridor.

"Where is everyone?" Warrick asked, accustomed to seeing at least some activity at crime scenes.

"In the stairwell. The ME is there."

Assistant Coroner David Phillips was crouched in the stairwell, contemplating the head of a corpse protruding from under a tipped Coke machine.

"You've got to be kidding me, Super!" exclaimed Warrick. Phillips looked up.

"Oh, hey, Rick. Yeah, an urban legend come to life, eh?"

"I've heard about this, but I've never seen it," Catherine added.

"The question," said Mitchell from the doorway, "is did the Coke machine tip over on him, or was it pushed?"

David agreed to leave the corpse in place, not just during the crime scene photos, but also the fingerprinting of the machine, as the investigators didn't want to risk smudging any potentially probative evidence.

"Where did this start out?" Warrick asked, as Catherine began printing the machine.

"It was plugged in on the landing," Mitchell indicated, pointing up the stairs over which the machine was canted. Warrick looked around, and decided to approach the scene from the top.

"Catherine? I'm going up to take a look. Maybe there'll be a void pattern in the dust or something that will give us a better idea of what happened here."

Without looking up from her work, Catherine waved a hand at him in acknowledgement. "Hopefully the cleaning staff here isn't too diligent about the stairwells."

Gesturing at Mitchell to accompany him, he headed back to the elevator.

"Who found him?"

"Couple of classmates who came looking for some caffeine."

"Did they try to move the machine?"

"They say not, said they could tell he was dead and didn't touch anything, but…"

"Yeah, we'll need to interview them and get elimination prints. How 'bout after that? Anyone try to move the machine?"

"Not as far as I know. They called campus security who confirmed the guy was dead and called us. Their prints are on file already." Warrick nodded. All Vegas campus police had work cards in the fingerprint database.


	5. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

* * *

Sara Sidle had not expected, walking into the crime scene, to find the body still encased in the coils of a very much alive, very, very large python.

"I think 18 feet was an underestimate," she said softly to Grissom, who had entered the room right behind her. She turned her attention to an officer, standing with Coroner Al Robbins a safe distance back from the spectacle.

"Meet James Bloom," he said, gesturing at the scene.

"Officer Akers, why hasn't anyone gotten the snake off of the body?"

"We're open to suggestions, Ms. Sidle. Animal control came, took one look, and went back to get more staff and a bigger cage. They said an eighteen foot long constrictor needs five people to handle it safely. Short of shooting the snake, which seems unnecessary considering the victim is long dead, we're kind of out of ideas."

Sara glanced at her boss, meeting his eye with a twinkle of amusement at the bizarreness of the horrific situation, then started to make a careful survey of the house, being sure to keep an eye on the snake in the middle of the room. But the python, his jaws tightly clamped on the forearm of his victim, gave her no notice. She moved into the next room, followed shortly by Grissom.

"Does that snake look kind of thin to you?" she asked.

"I was thinking the same thing."

"The snake's cage is in here," she said peering beyond the large metal and glass display case through a doorway which opened onto a sun porch, "and there are chickens in a cage on the porch. How's this for a scenario? The guy underfeeds his python, waiting until it's famished to get the chickens. He brings them in, and for some reason opens the cage first, before feeding him."

"Maybe decided to clean the cage before he fed him?" hypothesized Grissom, noting that the cage had not been cleaned recently.

"Makes sense. Not a good idea, but…"

"We'll have to test his hands, but I'm guessing that he forgot to wash his hands between handling the chickens and opening the python cage."

"Snakes do have an acute sense of smell."

"So he opens the cage, smells like lunch to the starving snake…"

"Who took a bite of the delicious arm…"

"And while our vic was trying to get that very large head off of his wrist…"

"The snake coiled around him…"

"And Bob's your uncle."

Sara smiled, taking in the empty beer cans littering the room.

"I would hope my Uncle Bob would have enough sense to at least be sober when handling a full grown python."

"You know how it is, Sara. Familiarity with wild animals can lead to carelessness. Professional zookeepers are killed every year as a result. He'd probably had the snake since it was little and felt comfortable with it."

"And most likely if he'd kept it well-fed, he would never have had a problem."

"But wild animals are wild; trainable, but not tame-able. And hunger is a powerful motivator."

"So, Bugboy, how do we get the snake off of the body?"

"Ah, Harvard, I thought you'd never ask."

He led her back out into the living room.

"Officer Akers, have you had a chance to look around at all?"

"No sir. The snake…"

"I need you to see if you can find me a liquor cabinet. Keep an eye on the snake, but right now I don't think he has any interest in what's going on beyond that body." He looked back at his colleague.

"Sara, do you think the chickens are going to get out of the python cage, if you leave the top off?" She went back and looked at the cage, contemplating.

"I don't think so. I think they're going to head for the back, and it's completely enclosed."

"Then would you please put them in the cage, then exit the house out the back? I don't want you anywhere near the snake after you've handled those chickens, do you hear me?"

She gave him a cheeky look, then sobered. "You want me to condemn the chickens to their deaths."

"Sara, pythons are carnivores. He needs to eat SOMETHING. Unlike you, he doesn't have the choice of being a vegetarian. Personally I'd rather he eat those chickens than you. The option is killing the snake, just for being a snake. Your choice."

She nodded once, moved from the room and he heard the chickens clucking as they were gently moved from the tight quarters of their carrier to the more spacious python cage. He waited until he heard the porch door close behind Sara as she went out the back.

"Akers, do you have anything for me?"

His voice came from beyond the other side of the room. "Found the booze in the kitchen. There are a bunch of other snakes in here too."

"In cages?"

"Yeah. All carefully labeled, and they all seem secure. Although it looks like there may have been more cages in here recently."

"Don't worry about them for now. Let animal control know about the other snakes when they get back. Right now, just bring me whatever bottles there are of high proof stuff. And we're going to need to close all the doors, except the door to the room with his cage. Then you and Al get out of here. But be sure you leave the front door open so I can escape. Al, I'm going to need to get alcohol on the body. Hope that doesn't mess up too much for you."

"It's going to cause you more of a problem with trace than it will for me. I do tox on blood and urine," the medical examiner assured Grissom as he exited swiftly from the room. Not for the first time was Grissom impressed by how fast Robbins could move on his crutches. With a sudden thought, he followed the ME out the door.

"Hey, Akers, if this works, don't let anyone else near the snake, okay? If we don't get anything off of the cage, we might be able to lift finger prints off of him, make sure there wasn't anyone else involved."

Heading back inside, Grissom surveyed the room once more, trying to look at it from a snake's point of view. He knew snakes supposedly hated alcohol, but he was hoping that the primitive reptilian brain knew the place well enough to associate his cage with food, once his current target became unappealing. With a "Here goes nothing" muttered under his breath, he moved closer to the body and, after swabbing the victim's hands hoping to preserve any trace of Bloom having perhaps handled the chickens prior to opening the python's cage, poured two bottles of high-test booze over the corpse before emptying a third directly onto the snake's nose and mouth and stepping back briskly. As he had hoped, the snake disengaged quickly, first releasing the arm, then uncoiling and moving smoothly away from the body. Grissom ducked out the door and moved onto the porch where he could watch the snake from behind glass. Having given up on its now saturated owner as a source of food, the constrictor moved back into the other room, focused in on the chickens, and moved smoothly and rapidly back up and into his cage. Grissom hurried back in the python's wake to push its tail the rest of the way into the cage, and to shut and latch the door.

Sara poked her head in from the back door.

"All clear in here?"

"Yes," Grissom said in a gush, the adrenaline coursing through his veins making him suddenly shaky.

"Good, because Gil, I've got another body back here."


	6. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

* * *

The alley off of Fremont Street was dark, dingy and smelled bad. Detective Alex Vartann was waiting when Nick and Greg arrived.

"Hey, guys. David Phillips is finishing up at another scene and then will be on his way. At first blush, _this_ one looks like love gone bad." He led the way around piles of garbage to a body beside a dumpster.

"Meet William Tennant."

Mr. Tennant was sprawled prone on the tarmac in a pool of blood, arms outstretched, pants and underwear down around his ankles, gunshot to his left temple. Nick looked closely at the injury.

"Small caliber weapon at close range. .22 maybe? Is there an exit wound?"

"Just an entrance, which would support your hypothesis. .22s often don't have enough force to exit the skull, but instead bounce around inside, lacerating the brain. And the blood splatter and blood pool suggests this is the crime scene."

"What was Mr. Tennant doing in this alley?"

Vartann indicated a doorway.

"That leads to Mr. Tennant's bar. This dumpster is where they empty their trash. According to the assistant manager, Tennant was here alone after closing last night, doing the books. The back door was unlocked. Either he let his assailant in and they moved it back here, or he was surprised in the alley when he took out the trash."

Greg looked around the filthy alley and met Nick's gaze, mutually acknowledging that they had a long night ahead of them.

"Okay, G. You want the body or the alley?"

"I'll start with the alley, thanks."

"Okay. I'll take the body then move in to the bar. Let's get to work."


	7. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

* * *

Akers put in a call for a detective while Sara grabbed her kit and then led Grissom through the weedy backyard. A rusted '67 Chrysler New Yorker sat up on cement blocks, surrounded by shaky piles of old tires. Behind the car, up against a six foot wooden fence sprawled the bloody corpse of a scantily clad young woman who appeared to be in her late teens or early twenties, bruised and dirty, her limbs akimbo. The distal end of a soprano recorder extended out from under her skirt.

"She's barely more than a kid," Sara commented softly. Grissom glanced back at the house, and seeing no witnesses, slid an arm over her shoulder and gave her a quick hug. Comforting Sara was a luxury he rarely indulged in, especially at work.

"The best thing we can do for her now is figure out who did this."

"So let's get to work," and in unspoken agreement on their division of labor, with camera and evidence markers in hand, Sara began processing the scene while Grissom started examining the body.

Grissom and Sara had nearly finished when, following Officer Aker's directions, LVPD Detective Sophia Curtis strode through the backyard towards the two investigators.

Just after Sofia had made detective, she had been assigned to the Crime Lab as a Crime Scene Investigator. Hardly the job she'd been hoping for, she'd been determined to make the best of it and to excel in the position. The daughter of a police captain, smart, ambitious and politically savvy, her efforts had paid off; she'd moved up quickly, and was appointed acting supervisor of the swing shift by lab director Conrad Ecklie when her boss, a native of the Bronx, got a job back home with the NYPD.

And then Ecklie had asked her to investigate an accusation of impropriety made against Grissom and his team. Her investigation had cleared the night shift supervisor, and that triumph of integrity over politics had cost her the job. Ecklie had summarily divided Grissom's team, reassigning Catherine, Nick and Warrick to swing shift, giving Catherine Sofia's old job. Sofia herself had been moved to nights, where she'd worked with Grissom, Sara and Greg, the "problem CSIs". The switch to nights had not gone well. Joining that tight, well-established graveyard team had proved challenging, no matter her skills as an investigator, and the demotion had continued to rankle, so when a detective job opened up in Boulder City, she snatched at the opportunity to move out of Vegas and get her career back on track.

And then a detective position opened up back at LVPD and she found herself back in her jeep, heading southwest.

The one silver lining in the night shift assignment had been getting to know Gil Grissom better, and as she'd set her sights on Grissom the first time she'd seen him in a tux, she'd decided to take advantage of the opportunity.

The social environment to which Sofia returned was dramatically different from that she had left a mere six month earlier, so Sara was somewhat sympathetic to the snarkiness with which the detective treated her upon her return. Looking at it from the cop's perspective, she'd left on good terms with Gil Grissom, at a time when even Sara's continuing employment was a bit questionable. Since then Sara and Grissom had become well-established lovers, the night shift team had been restored, and Sara's professional struggles all but forgotten.

Grissom genuinely liked Sofia Curtis, but her earlier attentions had also served to prevent others from noticing the attention he'd started paying to Sara, and Grissom had taken advantage of that. "Project Sidle" was well underway by that time, and Grissom had been concerned that the rest of his team of trained investigators might notice the time he was spending with his young protégé and discern his underlying motives. Sofia, with her blatant interest, had been the perfect distraction.

So Sofia'd come back hoping to be able to pick up a burgeoning romance and found herself instead somewhat stiff-armed by the night shift supervisor, both personally and, to some degree professionally. The tone had been set on her first day back, when she and Sara had disagreed on how to go about processing evidence at a scene, and Grissom had come down swiftly and completely on Sara's side. It didn't matter that she'd probably been right--Sara usually was when it came to processing evidence--it was more the look in Grissom's eye when Sofia had caught it as they'd headed to the car. His expression made it as clear as if he'd said it out loud—"Sofia, that's somewhere you just don't want to go."

And sympathetic or not, and no matter how sub rosa her relationship with Grissom was, Sara was certainly not going to let Sofia who, to be honest, with her loving parents and happy childhood had always intimidated Sara a bit, move in on Grissom. Just over a month ago, she'd nearly had to drive Sofia from Grissom's office when the detective showed up at the lab in the midst of the investigation of an officer involved shooting that she'd been in the middle of. At the time she'd been suspended and banned from the lab, and from contact with people involved in the investigation. Again, Sara had been in the right, but that hadn't made it any easier for Sofia to deal with.

"Grissom, Sara. What have we got?" Detective Curtis asked as she reached the investigators. And then her eyes fell on the victim, and Sofia lost a little color from her face. She looked back up at them, much of her cockiness drained from her eyes.

"Doc Robbins already left for the morgue with the first 419. He did his preliminary exam before he took off," Sara told her softly, standing close at Grissom's side.

"Why would anyone…" Sofia's voice dropped off and she looked up, hoping to gain some understanding from Grissom but found that he was focused entirely on his young investigator, an unreadable but faintly concerned look on his face. So instead Sofia met Sara's sympathetic gaze.

"There are some things that just defy human understanding," Sara answered her quietly.

"To use a musical instrument, practically a child's toy…"

"There's no end to the cruelty people will inflict on each other," Sara intoned, stating a fact the little trio knew all too well. Sofia paused for a minute more then gave herself a mental shake.

"Okay, so what have you got so far?"

"We've processed the area—didn't find much," Sara told her. Grissom stayed silent, letting Sara continue to take the lead. "Some trampled grass, a cigarette butt that looks fairly fresh, but as you know, it's been dry, so..." Sofia nodded and not for the first time did Grissom reflect on how much easier it was to work with a detective with a background in forensics. It was one of the things that also made Captain Jim Brass such a pleasure to work with. One of many things. "She was brought here and positioned post-mortem," Sara continued. "Lividity does not match her current position. And there's not nearly enough blood on the ground considering the amount of blood on the body and the brutality of the stab wounds." "Any connection to the death in the house?" "So far we don't know anything about her at all," Sara replied, "So I have no way to answer that question." "She looks like Raggedy Ann," Sofia commented softly, idly, looking at the body's loose limbs and lolling head.

"The way she's positioned, she looks so vulnerable. At first I thought she looked like she was about twelve," Sara responded, her voice equally low.

"Yeah, that too," Sofia agreed.


	8. Chapter 6

**Tuesday 12-13-2005**

* * *

**Chapter 6**

* * *

"So," Warrick concluded, summarizing the case for his co-workers, sitting around the break room table, waiting for Grissom to hand out the evening's assignments, "it really does look like an accident. The guy's handprints are all over the top of the machine, which was notorious for eating quarters without dispensing a Coke. The dust pattern does not suggest anyone on the sides of the machine. He must have been pissed off enough just to pull the whole thing over on top of himself."

"An urban legend come to life," Catherine added.

"You know, it really isn't an urban legend," Sara replied. "According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission there have been 37 known vending machine fatalities since 1978. That's more than two deaths a year. That's about four times as many Americans as are killed by sharks."

"But far fewer than the 90 killed by lightning strikes, the 120 who die in plane crashes or the 36,000 who die of the flu. You all did get your flu shots this year, right?" intoned Grissom from the doorway. "Good job closing that case, guys. I take it UNLV is moving all of their vending machines from the stairwells?"

"They are."

"Well, Sara and I are still on our 420, and Greg and Nick, your case is still open as well. That leaves Catherine and Warrick to take tonight's 430."

Sara looked at him in surprise. "Another animal bite?"

"Another snake, and another fatality. This one's a rattlesnake bite. And just for the record, nationally only about a dozen people die after being bitten by venomous snakes each year. Have fun, guys. You're off to an interesting week."


	9. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

* * *

"Do you know statistically what most rattlesnake bites have in common?" Catherine quizzed Warrick as he drove them through the dark city.

"The victims die?"

"Actually, no. There are approximately 8,000 bites a year, but only a dozen or so deaths. Were you paying attention to Grissom today at all? Some are dry bites, some cause only local reactions, some respond to treatment with antivenin. Snake bites in the United States are rarely fatal."

"So, what do they have in common?"

"Snake bite victims are most often teen or young adult men with tattoos who have been drinking and are intentionally handling the snake."

"You're kidding me!"

"I'm not."

"I don't think I've ever been that drunk."

"Or that stupid. And hopefully you never will be. There are some weird things about this case, though. The victim is reported to be 28. Children are more likely to succumb to snake bites because of their smaller size. And most bites take place in between April and October, when people and snakes are most likely to run into each other. Not December."

Warrick pulled in behind a black and white at the curb in front of an unassuming one-storey stucco ranch house. Catherine grimaced a little as she saw Officer Joe Metcalf exit the house and start towards them. Not known for his tact, sensitivity or, for that matter, competence, he was far from the CSIs' favorite cop.

"Look, it's LVPD's finest."

The officer appeared equally glad to see them.

"Great, it's the Geek Squad. What took you guys so long? We've almost wrapped up here."

"If you didn't need us, why'd you call for us, Metcalf?" Warrick inquired.

"Looks like there might be a tie-in to that case Grissom had yesterday, and he's tied up with another case. We think this 419 stole his snakes from the dead guy last night."

"You're kidding, right?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Come on in and see. I'll show you what we've got."

Metcalf led the way into the house where several carefully labeled ten-gallon aquariums were stacked haphazardly in the center of the living room. They had screen lids and each contained at least one rattlesnake—some contained several. The lid of one of the tanks was askew, and Catherine and Warrick could see at a glance that it was empty.

"One of the Animal Control guys thought that these cages matched cages at the scene yesterday," Metcalf explained.

"Ummm, Officer Metcalf?" Catherine asked cautiously, "Where's the snake?"

"Animal Control sent a snake wrangler out to get him—they'll

hold onto him and care for him until and unless he's needed as evidence. But be careful. There's nothing on these tanks that indicates how many snakes each one held. We're assuming there was only one snake loose, because that's all we found, but we really don't have any idea. The good news is that supposedly they're more afraid of us than we are of them. At least that's what the wrangler said."

Metcalf did not look as though he was highly comforted by the information, and Catherine and Warrick exchanged a quick smile at the darting looks Metcalf cast about the room as he talked.

"So, where's the body?"

"It's in the next room. Come on."

David Phillips was standing over the corpse of a twenty-something year old man with long stringy dark hair, bulging muscles and a plethora of tattoos, which was sprawled out on a ratty couch. He glanced over as they entered, with the air of a man keeping track of all movement in his peripheral vision.

"Hi, guys."

"Hi, David," Catherine greeted him.

"Well, you got the tattoos right, at least," Warrick commented, scanning the scene. "Let's see about the rest." He indicated the coffee table scattered with beer cans in front of the couch. "Looks like you might have the drinking down too." He looked over at the assistant coroner. "David, you have any idea what went down here?"

"Not really, but you might check out the video camera in the corner. It was still running when the officers arrived. I think Metcalf has the tape."


	10. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

* * *

With the crime lab night shift audiovisual whiz Archie Johnson seated beside him in the A-V lab, Warrick watched in amazement as the victim he had last seen dead on his couch aped for the camera. Clearly intoxicated, he leered at the lens.

"Jimbo, you always were such a prick about these snakes. Such a chicken! What's a little baby rattler going to do to you anyway? Give you an owe-y? Who ever would have thought, as anal as you were with these guys, I'd walk in to bring you some weed and find you killed by a snake that isn't even poisonous?!" Still snickering, he reached off screen to pull about a 9" long little rattlesnake out of a tank and dangle it in front of him.

"Look at how cute he is!" Holding the snake with two fingers just behind the head, he swung the struggling animal around a little in the air, then turned it around to face him."

"Hi, baby!" he crooned. "How about a kiss for Daddy?" He brought the snake toward his face, clearly planning to follow through on his stated plan. As the frightened little creature neared his lips, it wriggled enough to gain a bit of head control and struck, sinking its fangs deeply into his bottom lip. The man froze for a second, before shouting "Shit, you little bastard!" ripping the snake away, and flinging it off screen. He stood for a moment, then rocked woozily on his legs and sank down to the couch.

"That snake," Catherine intoned from the doorway, "is a Mojave Green or Mojave Rattlesnake, probably about four months old. It's the only species of North American Rattlesnake with a neurotoxic venom. Unlike other Crotalines, which kill by disrupting the integrity of the circulatory system leading to death by circulatory collapse, usually over several hours, the venom of the Mojave attacks the nervous system with neurotoxins _and_ the bloodstream with hemotoxins. In severe cases, like if you get bitten on the lip, rapid paralysis is possible, and skeletal muscle weakness can lead to difficulty breathing and respiratory failure."

"I guess he didn't realize that a baby rattler can kill you just as easily as an adult."

"Actually, it's more likely to. Adults have learned to control the injection of their venom, and they aren't trying to eat you. That's one of the reason there are so many dry bites. Babies, however, are scared and inexperienced. They'll throw everything at you including the kitchen sink. Just bad luck this little guy managed to sink his fangs into the guy's face."

"Bad luck? The guy was trying to KISS the snake! Where else was it going to bite him?"

Just then Catherine's pager went off. She glanced at it and let out a tired breath.

"Come on partner. Larry Mitchell has another 419 that has our name all over it."


	11. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

* * *

Sara generally respected the professional opinions of Albert Robbins, but the Medical Examiner had somewhat old-fashioned opinions about sex in general and rape in particular which were simply not supported by the forensic literature. As recently as a month ago she'd heard him state definitely that a victim had been a virgin. Sara knew that virginity could neither be established nor disproved by the presence or absence of an intact hymen, and that the presence or absence of vaginal trauma did nothing to distinguish between consensual sex and sexual assault. Studies showed that as many as a third of adolescents who were known to have been sexually assaulted (confirmed by confessions on the part of the perpetrator) had no physical findings on colposcopic examination. And it was well documented that even significant trauma could occur with consensual sexual activity. While it was rare, there were even case reports of women with intact hymens after the delivery of babies, possible because the hymen is not a solid membrane, but rather a redundant ring of stretchy distensible tissue, something like a hair scrunchy, attached to the edges of the vagina. And yet Robbins constantly made statements regarding the sexual experiences of victims, and whether or not they'd been assaulted. "I don't see any evidence of rape," Robbins would intone as he did his external exam. But not this time. This time there was little doubt about what had happened.

"Why a recorder, do you think?" Sara pondered out loud as she studied the bloody instrument still protruding from between the victim's legs.

"He hated fifth grade music class?" guessed Robbins.

Grissom threw him a dirty look and Sara choked back a laugh.

"I'm guessing it was an object of convenience," Grissom responded evenly, meeting Sara's eyes.

"Right place at the wrong time?"

"Exactly."

Robbins looked up from the corpse where he'd been continuing his exam and caught the intense gaze between his two colleagues. He waited a couple of beats, but seeing no change in the silent exchange, cleared his throat.

"Do you have any ID on this young lady yet, but any chance?"

Grissom looked over at him, surprised. The corpse had been logged in as "Jane Doe". Robbins knew perfectly well they hadn't identified her.

"Why?"

"Because she's lactating. There's a baby out there somewhere missing his mommy."

Exchanging a startled look with Sara, Grissom hurriedly pulled out his cell phone.

"Sofia? Have there been any recent reports filed involving an abandoned baby?"

"Not that I'm aware of, and generally a call like that would go out as an 'all points'. But I'll check. Why? What's up?"

"Looks like our murder vic had a kid."


	12. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

* * *

Michael Jeffries sat on a padded leather couch in the living room of the house he had shared with William Tennant, his face streaked with tears as he tried to answer the questions of the investigative team.

"There wasn't anything unusual about it. Bill tried to keep home and work separate."

His voice caught, and he took a minute getting himself under control.

"He never brought work home, so he often stayed late working on the books, or plans for the bar. He told me he'd be late; I went to bed. When he wasn't here in the morning, I just assumed he'd decided to sleep at the bar. There's a couch in his office; he stays over sometimes. I worry about him driving when he's too tired."

A sob escaped his lips as he thought about what he'd just said, and the realization that perhaps staying had caused his partner's death. Nick saw the idea enter his mind.

"No, sir. The medical examiner says that Mr. Tennant was killed at about 2:30 last night. Right after closing. He wouldn't have left earlier than that on any night, would he? He wasn't killed because he promised you not to drive tired."

"Why _**was**_ he killed?"

Nick met his anguished, pleading gaze with a sympathetic one.

"We don't know yet, sir. But we're going to do our best to find out."

"Mr. Jeffries?" Vartann interjected. "Do you have any idea who might have wanted to hurt Mr. Tennant?"

He shook his head violently. "Everyone loves--loved--Bill. No one would want to hurt him. He's a good man, a gentle man. The bar was a community, a place for locals, not tourists or high rollers. One where people know each other. Not a meat market. A neighborhood pub."

"Sounds like a nice place," Greg commented.

"Yeah. A community. And that's all Bill. He knows how to make people feel good, to feel welcome, important, to make a place feel comfortable. It's an amazing skill, you know? He did it here too. Made this place a home." Tears welled up in his eyes as he thought of the months and years that stretched before him, and the gaping hole which had been left in his life.

"Sir?" Vartann interjected, "Could we please get a little background? How long had you and Mr. Tennant been together?"

"I beg your pardon?" He tore his gaze from Greg's and looked at Vartann blindly. "Together? Oh, um, nineteen years. We've been together for nineteen years." He looked around distractedly. "We just bought this house. Bill wanted a bigger pool. He swims laps every day for exercise. He used to run, but he had knee problems..."

Back at the curb following the interview, Nick paused and looked at the detective.

"So, Vartann, still think this was a lover's squabble?" Nick asked.

The detective sighed and rotated his shoulders and rolled his head on his neck, trying to loosen tight muscles.

"You know as well as I do, Stokes, that people aren't always what they seem," he paused, then his shoulders slumped. "But if this was a lover's quarrel, I don't think Jeffries was one of the parties."


	13. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

* * *

After examining and documenting the recorder in situ, Robbins carefully extracted it and handed it off to Sara Sidle. Sara took it back to the lab where she dusted it for prints. Her first lifts were somewhat smudged, and not particularly useful, but she was able to get useable prints on her second, and in one case, third lifts.

Grissom caught up with her two hours later.

"Anything?"

"I don't think we're going to get anything on the make of the recorder. It's the most common brand made, sold to practically every kid in America. But I got some useable prints. Unfortunately, I didn't get anything when I ran them through IAFIS. So, if we catch him, we'll be able to identify him, but we've got to catch him first. Any word on the baby?"

Grissom shook his head in frustration.

"Nothing yet. The department put out a press release to every media outlet in town, and they're all running the story."

"Robbins say anything about the weapon yet?"

"Serrated blade, about eight inches long. Maybe some kind of kitchen knife. But he couldn't give us any more than that."

"Then somehow, we're just going to have to find that baby."


	14. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

* * *

Back in the lab after processing the scene of what appeared to be a straight up mercy killing murder-suicide, Catherine Willows sat at the layout table, watching Warrick catalogue the evidence they'd collected. She was supposed to be helping him, but fatigue had slowed her activity to the point that she'd finally stopped and instead was simply sitting and watching him. So far, Warrick hadn't complained, and Catherine thought it unlikely that he would.

Despite the tough guy exterior Warrick sometimes chose to portray, he really was quite a gentleman, and he did seem to be taking his post-Nick abduction oath to look out for his colleagues seriously. That aspect of his reaction to the near loss of his closest friend, Catherine appreciated. His sudden marriage to Tina had been harder to understand, harder to accept, and for a while it had been tough to talk to him about it, to acknowledge it even. But she'd noticed that Warrick did seem happier recently, and even if no one else was aware, she'd noted him occasionally ducking out for a few minutes mid-shift, to hook up with his wife at the nearby clinic where she worked. He generally returned from those visits with a smile on his face. Maybe, despite her dire predictions, this was one hurried marriage which _would_ succeed.

And regardless of her own feelings towards Warrick, she certainly didn't wish him anything but the best. It probably would have been easier on her if Warrick's marriage had come at a time when she herself were involved with someone, but the reality was that her own social life was in the midst of a pretty serious slump. Catching Chris Bezich, her last boyfriend, right in the act with one of the waitresses at the night club he managed, followed by a post-mild flirtation parking lot confrontation with defense attorney Alex Novak that had left her with a black eye, had put a damper on her willingness to take a chance with a stranger, not that she generally met anyone who wasn't a suspect anyway. And as bad as her guy radar might be at times, it wasn't _that_ bad.

Besides, these days she found herself comparing anyone who piqued her interest to Warrick, and pretty much everyone else came up lacking in that comparison.

"Sheesh!" Catherine gave herself a mental shake. "If I don't watch it, I'm going to end up as bad as Sara!"


	15. Chapter 13

**Wednesday 12-14-2005**

* * *

**Chapter 13**

* * *

Mid-shift, Nick strode into his supervisor's office a minute ahead of Greg, ready to update their supervisor on their case, and paused, taken aback. Grissom looked up at him quizzically, waiting while music played softly in the background.

_We swore we'd travel, darlin' side by side_

_We'd help each other, stay in stride_

_But each lover's steps fall so differently_

_But I'll wait for you_

_And if I should fall behind_

_Wait for me._

"Hey, Man! I would never have taken you for a Springsteen fan."

Grissom eyed him speculatively.

"Bruce Springsteen is the voice of his generation. An evocative story-teller of the working man, real Americana, in his own way as important to our time as Shakespeare was to his. And he gives the best live concert of anyone on the planet, Nick."

Stokes looked as if he were going to respond, but was interrupted by Greg barreling in through the door behind him. Grissom tilted his head towards the twin armchairs in front of his desk, and Nick and Greg took their seats.

"I don't know, 'Boss'." Nick grinned, then continued, "This thing has all of the earmarks of a deeply personal crime, but it's weird. There were no fluids on the body, no semen, no saliva, neither the victim's nor the perp's. And Jeffries just doesn't fit. I'm not picking up on any vibe that suggests there was tension in this relationship. They had just moved, which I know can be a stressor but it doesn't feel like it was. They really seem like a devoted, happy couple," Nick began.

"Things are not always as they seem, Nicky, especially where human relationships are involved."

"No," agreed Greg, "but we've interviewed family members, patrons of the bar and long-time friends and _**no one**_ seems to think there was any kind of real conflict in this relationship. Neither partner has so much as a traffic ticket, and none of their friends have ever seen either one get violent, or even really angry. These guys both enjoyed the same things. They were the same kind of people. Jeffries is a social worker. Tennant created a bar that became the center of a real community. They're both caregivers, both exercise nuts, both gourmet cooks. They had all the same interests. I tell you, Gris, it sounds like the perfect relationship!"

Grissom looked up sharply at his junior investigator.

"And now I know you've never been in love. When you're in love with someone—I'm talking about real 'til-death-do-you-part love, Greg, not infatuation—it's the weaknesses that are as or more important than the strengths. 'Cause that's where you fit, into the weaknesses. Strengths may be intriguing when you first meet someone, and they'll always be something you'll admire and take pride in on behalf of your beloved, but the thing that makes two people fit together are complimentary weaknesses. If you can't be there for your partner when she's struggling, if you struggle with the same things, it doesn't bode well for your relationship."

Greg watched his boss thoughtfully, knowing that his response had nothing to do with the case they were discussing, thinking back a month to the scene of the Bell shooting, to the moment when, bringing food back to Grissom and Sara, he'd come across them sound asleep in their Denali, hands tightly clasped across the center console. Despite his happiness for his friends, while lying in bed at night, Greg hadn't been able to keep from wondering just what it was that Grissom had that he didn't.

Listening to Grissom now though, he had an epiphany. That dark and sad place deep inside Sara—somehow Grissom understood it, had gotten inside of it, and somehow he had made it better. That was why Sara had seemed so much happier recently. It wasn't just that they were together, but a more fundamental shift. And it wasn't just Sara. Grissom too was more relaxed, less driven, kinder.

Greg figured that in addition to everything they had in common, their weaknesses must fit.


	16. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14**

* * *

"It's such a shame. By all accounts, they were a devoted couple. Her cancer had metastasized to her bones and she was in a great deal of pain. The morphine wasn't controlling it, but it was snowing her to the point that she didn't have any quality of life. He gave her a massive dose of morphine, waited until she died, and then shot himself. They were both physicians. They knew what they were deciding, what they were doing." Catherine sat opposite Grissom's desk after shift, and took a sip of the glass of brandy he'd poured her, and continued discussing the case she and Warrick had just investigated.

"But they also knew that assisted suicide is illegal in Nevada, and apparently either he wasn't willing to face the charges, or wasn't willing to face life without her. I can understand that," Grissom mused. "Not that it was probably a factor in this case, but as you know, more than half of all fire arm deaths are suicides. Having a gun in your house greatly increases your risk of dying of either suicide or homicide—contrary to many people's beliefs, owning a handgun actually makes you and your family significantly less safe."

"Not to mention that 90 of suicide attempts involving guns are successful, compared to about a third of jumping from heights and only 2 of attempted O.D.s"

"And even when they fail, people often end up with significant sequelae," he said, thinking in particular of a teenager who had tried to kill himself by putting his father's shotgun to his temple and pulling the trigger. He'd failed to kill himself, but succeeded in blowing off part of his face, including a cheek bone and both eyes, fating himself to a life of blindness with a significant facial deformity. He'd been upset over his girl friend of two weeks breaking up with him. He was sixteen.

"Plus, the fact that they were both physicians worked against them," Grissom continued. "Physicians are more likely to attempt suicide, and are much more likely to be successful than any other group. Also, male and female physicians are equally likely to kill themselves. Unlike the rest of us, there is no 4:1 gender gap between male and female doctors."

"It makes sense. Doctors have the knowledge to be successful, and they see how tragic the results of failed attempts can be. They don't go half-way. And female physicians have to be able to succeed in a competitive and still male-oriented field. They're used to getting results. But what I don't understand? All they had to do was have HER push the morphine. She was physically capable of drawing it up and injecting it. He could have waited in the next room and would have been completely in the clear. And they would have understood that."

Inadvertently, Grissom imagined himself in that position, alone with Sara, having spent fifty years together, with her dying, and in pain. He could imagine sitting with her and carefully discussing their options, rationally deciding that it was time to say 'goodbye'. What he couldn't imagine doing was giving her the responsibility of, once having heard her decide that she was ready to die, making her push that plunger, or leaving her alone at that time, even for a minute. Even for a second. A nanosecond.

"Don't you? He loved her. He couldn't have done it any other way."


	17. Chapter 15

**Thursday 12-15-2005**

* * *

**Chapter 15**

* * *

"Officer Mitchell. We have to stop meeting like this," Catherine greeted him.

"Hey, guys. The body is back here."

Larry Mitchell led Catherine and Warrick through the backyard of a modest two-story frame home past the spot where a stargazing tent was staked around a large telescope and on into the alley behind where the body of a man laid spread eagle near a light pole.

"According to his girlfriend, he wanted to watch the tail end of the Geminid meteor shower, or maybe to gaze at Saturn," Mitchell commented. "She doesn't know what he was doing back here in the alley."

Catherine cast an experienced investigator's gaze over the scene.

"Do we know how long the light on that pole has been out?" she asked.

"No, but I can find out."

"Most people around here consider a lighted alley an asset," Catherine mused, "but I'll bet the glare was interfering with his star gazing. Let's take a closer look at that light, okay, Warrick?"

"You bet."

Two hours later, back in the Denali, headed for the Crime Lab, Catherine mused, "Rick, do you remember Tod Surmon?"

"The name's familiar…"

"I worked the case with Brass. January 1st, 2000. Our first death of the millennium."

"Don't say that around Grissom. You'll get a lecture on millennia going from the year '01 to the year '00. So that would have been the last year of the last millennia..."

Catherine laughed. "I heard Sara make the exact same point when Greg said something about the start of the millennium."

"Well, birds of a feather… But I think I remember that guy. He was an Olympic boxer or something, right?"

"Wrestler. Olympic hopeful. Came here for the celebration, and climbed a light pole. Just at midnight he raised a fist, lost his balance and grabbed a hold of a high intensity wire. He was electrocuted and fell thirty feet into the crowd below. Dr. Flud," she said, referring to one of the daytime medical examiners, "felt that both the electrocution and the fall contributed to his death."

"This remind you of that case?"

"Well, a little, don't you think?"

"Yeah, I do. High voltage wires and stupidity are a bad combination."

Later, Gil Grissom sat back in his desk chair and listened to the report from two of his investigators as they explained the electrocution of a young computer programmer.

"So," explained Warrick, "the guy is trying to watch a meteor shower from his back yard."

"Guess he wasn't much of an astronomer," Grissom commented. "First, the Geminid Meteor Shower peaked this year two days ago, on December 13th. That alone wouldn't have been a problem, the shower generally lasts a week or so, but the best way to view a meteor shower is with the naked eye. Our wide field of vision is our greatest asset for seeing falling stars. Plus, we live surrounded by the Nevada desert, one of the great places for stargazing in the country, and he's sitting in his urban back yard. Oh, and we had a full moon last night—less than idea for watching the heavens, unless you want to stare at the moon."

"Apparently," began Catherine, taking up the story where her friend and colleague had left off, "while he didn't see the full moon as a problem, the street light from the alley behind his house was bothering him, so he went out, pried the access plate off and cut through the power cord with a saw."

"4000 volts." Warrick shook his head. "A neighbor saw a flash of light and then our Sagan wannabe was lying flat on his back in the alley. He was DOA at Desert Palms."

Grissom eyed them thoughtfully. "Guess he wasn't much of an electrician either."

And just then, Sofia stuck her head through the open door to his office.

"Grissom, let's go! We may have found the baby!"


	18. Chapter 16

**Chapter 16**

* * *

Grissom grabbed his cell phone and paged Sara.

"What's up, Boss?" she answered.

"I'm on my way to the car. Meet me there. PD has a lead on the baby!"

Sara actually beat Grissom to the car, and was therefore there to catch Sofia's "damn, I was planning on having him ride with me" look, even if Grissom missed it. But, to give Sofia credit, the expression flashed briefly across her face and then was gone.

Sara drove, following the detective's vehicle out into the suburbs.

"Did Sofia give you any information?"

"Just that they got an anonymous call about an unattended baby."

It was true that they could have used the travel time to update the detective on their findings and to learn what she had learned in her investigation, but the Crime Scene Investigators had long since learned that their departure time and that of the detectives rarely coincided so, except in unusual situations, it was standard procedure for them bring their own vehicle.

A black and white unit was pulled up in front of the house when they arrived, two officers on the front porch getting ready to kick in the door.

"They must have found something," Sara mused.

Simultaneously they exited the vehicles. Sofia, weapon in her hand, looked back at them from the walk as an ambulance pulled up beside their Denali.

"You two stay there until I tell you it's all right!" she barked at the investigators. Grissom cast a glance at Sara. She smiled at him and deliberately backed up to lean against the car.

The front door splintered and Sofia and the two officers rushed into the house. A moment later Sofia re-emerged , a crying toddler clinging to her. She hurried down the walk and handed the child over to the waiting paramedics, then turned to Grissom and Sara. She looked a little pale.

"We're in the right place. The officers could see the baby through the front window. Your crime scene, it's inside," she told them.

Grissom looked at Sara.

"One of us needs to go and process the baby," he told her. And as much as Sara repeatedly protested that she wasn't good with kids whenever they had cases involving them, she had no doubt which of them he meant was going in the ambulance.

"Then I'll see you later." She called to the paramedics, "Hang on guys, I'm going with you!" and climbed into the back of the bus.

"The scene will be yours as soon as the uniforms finish clearing the house," Sofia told Grissom. "It's not pretty," she added. "I got that impression," he replied solemnly.


	19. Chapter 17

**Chapter 17**

* * *

In the ambulance, paramedic Wayne Wilderson took the baby's vitals then stripped him naked. The diaper was completely saturated and spilling over. The baby's perineum and buttocks were covered with feces, the skin was raw and ulcerated. There was dried blood on his face and in his hair.

"This diaper looks like it's been on for days," he exclaimed.

"Smells like it too," Jeff Stevens added from the front of the squad. "They know we're coming. They'll have a team waiting in the trauma room."

Wilderson looked over at Sara. "Right behind you, in that bottom drawer. Should be a bottle of pedialyte and a nipple. Pull it out, would you, and put the nipple on. Let's get some fluids in the little guy."

The baby grabbed the bottle greedily and began sucking it as soon as Sara had it ready, while Wilderson tried to gently clean off the boy.

The ride to Sunrise Children's took less than ten minutes, and the trauma room was ready for him when they arrived. Doctors whisked the baby from the paramedics. After bagging the diaper, Sara followed, camera in hand. She documented each stage while the medical team assessed his vital signs and drew blood. One of the ER docs looked over at her.

"What happened to him?!"

"So far it looks like his mother was murdered in front of him, and then he was left alone in his crib for four days."

"Four days!" She looked down at the little tyke, sucking away on a new bottle of pedialyte. "It's amazing he's not dead!"

"Yeah, what's the rule of thumb? Three minutes without oxygen, three hours without shelter in a harsh environment, three days without water, three weeks without food?"

"So they say. But there _**are**_ cases of people surviving a week to ten days without water. Not that I'd recommend trying it…"

"I'm going to need samples of the blood on his face and in his hair."

"You can take your samples now. You won't be in the way. And as soon as we get the blood work back and make sure that this little guy is as stable as he looks, frankly, I'm taking him in the staff shower and sluicing him off."

"Those lesions on his buttocks—they look like burns."

"Actually, they are. Chemical burns. From the stool and urine. We'll treat them like any other burns as soon as we get him clean. Do you know his name?"

Sara pulled out her cell phone and called her supervisor.

"Grissom."

"Gris, it's me. Listen, do you have an ID on the little guy yet?"

"Well, Mom's last name was Johnson. Don't know whether that was his last name or not. But we found a bib embroidered with the name 'Elliott' that I'm guessing is his. It's possible that it was a hand-me-down…"

"Hang on one sec, Gris." Sara lowered the phone and from her position off to one side said, in a conversational tone, "Elliott." The baby whipped his head around to look at her. She spoke again into the phone. "Looks like it's not a hand-me-down. So, 'Elliott Johnson', until we learn otherwise. Maybe Sofia can track down a birth certificate." She raised her eyes to confirm that the physician she'd been talking to had written down the name. "He looks like he's about…" She paused, and the doc whispered, "Eighteen months or so."

"About one and a half."

"She's already on it, Sara. How is he?"

"He really seems like he's in remarkably good shape, considering," she told him. "How's the scene?"

Weariness seeped into his voice. "It's bad, Honey."

"I'll be back to help you process as soon as I finish up here."

An irrational desire to protect Sara from what he'd seen that morning warred with his gratitude that he would soon have help processing the difficult scene.

"Thanks. I'll see you soon."

"Bye."


	20. Chapter 18

**Chapter 18**

* * *

Sara was prepared for the crime scene to be gory, but that didn't keep the tragic story it told from seeping into her soul. The house was small and sparsely furnished, but had clearly been neat, clean and cheery before violence had erupted. There were four rooms: a small bath with a rubber ducky on the edge of the tub, a galley kitchen complete with a bowl full of spoiling fruit on the counter and photos of Elliott wallpapering the front of the fridge, a living room with a playpen occupying an airy corner, and a bedroom where a neatly made single bed took up one wall and a crib sat near a sunny window. Brightly colored baby toys and picture books filled an inexpensive bookshelf. A stack of children's books from the library sat on top. But the playpen was filled with leaked feces and blood spatter. Spatter also covered the walls and ceiling; a large blood pool occupied the center of the carpet.

Grissom had greeted her as she came through the door.

"Hey."

"Hey. What still needs to be done?"

"I've not processed the outside of the house yet. Want to take that?"

Sara cast an eye around the interior. "You sure you don't want to take a break, do the outside, let me finish up in here?"

"No, I'm nearly done." He too looked around the little bungalow. "Small place. Makes it easier."

Sara studied the carpet pool, the arterial spray and the cast off blood.

"I guess we found our crime scene all right. Someone did not like Ms. Johnson."

"Apparently not."

"And Elliott had a front row seat."

He nodded. Their eyes met, and Sara nodded once too.

"Okay. I've got the exterior. Let me know if you change your mind."


	21. Chapter 19

**Friday 12-16-2005 **

* * *

**Chapter 19**

* * *

One of the things Grissom had learned about Sara early in their relationship was that she didn't like air conditioning. When he visited her in San Francisco it had made sense to him—who would want their windows closed to a breeze that might just waft in with the faint scent of the nearby sea? It wasn't until she moved to Las Vegas that he realized there was more to it than that. "I just don't like feeling so disconnected from the world, you know?" she'd explained the first time he'd questioned her choice of open windows instead of AC in the car on a warm spring day. "We spend so much of our time inside, in the lab, mostly at night, mostly in rooms without windows. I hate not knowing what's going on outside, even if it isn't 68 degrees and sunny."

Not that she was a fanatic about it or anything. She'd run the air conditioner in her oven of an apartment while she was trying to sleep during the day. After all, the only thing worse than trying to sleep during the day was trying to sleep during the day in an apartment that was 120 degrees Fahrenheit. And since moving in with him, she hadn't complained about the climate control, essential for some of his insects, and now, of course, for Hank. But the second the thermometer outside their back door reached a comfortable range, the air conditioning went off and windows were flung wide. And it had to be pretty chilly out before she'd voluntarily turn the heat on.

So it came as no surprise to him that Sara was driving back to the lab with the window open despite the cold front that had moved through, bringing more typical December Nevada weather and a sharp chill to the early morning air. Pulling his jacket a little more tightly around him, and boosting the thermostat, he partially turned in his seat to face the driver. "Hey, Sara, I forgot to mention--Brass gave me tickets to the fight at Mandalay Bay on Sunday. Want to go?"

Sara paused before answering, thinking that that was probably about the last thing she'd expected Grissom to ever ask her, deciding that 'I'd rather shoot four inch galvanized spikes into my head with a nail gun', the first response that came to her, probably wasn't the most diplomatic answer she could give.

"Sunday? Boxing? I was kind of thinking I'd take Hank for a long run on Sunday, and then maybe to the dog park, get outside, see the sun, have a quiet day to decompress. But it's fine with me if you want to go, Gil."

The pallor that had come over her at the question belied her casual response.

"You sure about that?"

"Absolutely positively."

"It would be more fun if you were there."

"Not for me."

Deciding to take her answer at face value, Grissom answered, "Okay" and turned his attention to the Johnson case. It wasn't until later that he gave himself a huge mental 'dope slap'. How could he have been so dumb?! He'd been so focused on the opportunity to go out and do something with Sara, to attend an event that he'd not given any thought to WHAT the event was! Sara, who'd grown up in a house where she and her mother lived in terror of her father, where she'd seen her mother kill her father, where bruises were hidden and fractures were secrets. Sara, who had trouble dealing with cases involving domestic violence. Of course she didn't want to go to a fight to see two men beating each other to a bloody pulp. And who could blame her? How could he even have considered asking her to go?


	22. Chapter 20

**Saturday 12-17-2005**

* * *

**Chapter 20**

* * *

"Okay, Nicky's off today, Greg is following up on some leads with Detective Vartann. Sara and I are due at a meeting with Sofia to bring everyone up-to-date on the status of our investigation. That again leaves you, Catherine and Warrick, to take tonight's 419A. Vega's at the scene. Have fun, kids." Aware that he and Sara needed to get going, Grissom hurried through assignments. Catherine reached over and took the single white slip of paper from his hand, glancing at it.

"Great, a drowning. Let's just hope it's fresh. I am SO not in the mood for a floater…"

Sofia Curtis was waiting in the lab conference room when Grissom and Sara reached it.

"Who wants to go first?" Grissom asked.

"The exterior doesn't show any sign of forced entry. I didn't find anything probative," Sara stated. "The garden was neat and tidy, well fenced, everything baby-safe. Just like the house."

"Okay," Grissom picked up the thread, "so maybe she knew her attacker, and let him in. Unfortunately, all of the blood at the scene and on the baby is hers. Nothing that's going to help us identify the killer."

"We did have a Forensic Interviewer try to elicit some history from Elliott," Sara added, "but he's really barely verbal, just a few words, and didn't give her anything useful."

"So," began Sofia, "looks like we're going to have to rely on good old fashioned police work for this one. Turns out Elliott's father is a scumbag drug dealer named Teal Benchley, pretty high roller, actually, big money, high in the organization. Keri Johnson had a brief fling with him when she first came to town, then apparently saw him for what he was and cut off all ties. He's been stalking her and leaving threats on her answering machine. She had a restraining order against him and according to her friends was considering moving back home to get away."

"Looks like maybe she waited too long," Sara said sadly.

"And Benchley?" Grissom asked.

"He's in the wind. We've got an all points out on him. Guys like that, they can't stay in hiding indefinitely. Sooner or later, he's going to show."

"What about the dump site? Any connection between Johnson, Benchley and Mr. Reptile? It seems an awfully big coincidence to randomly drop a body in the yard of someone who was just killed…" Sara pointed out.

"We're still working on that, too. We've established that George Finch, Catherine and Warrick's snake bite victim, was a low-level dealer for Benchley's organization, and that he stole several snakes from Mr. Bloom around the time of his death, but whether he told Benchley about Bloom's yard, assisted him or dumped the girl himself, we don't know."

"There wasn't any evidence of her blood on Finch," Sara recalled, "and as much blood as there was…"

"Yeah, I don't think he moved her either, but we haven't found any other connection between Bloom and Benchley, so we're pretty sure he's involved somehow. And some of the details may never get answered, unless Benchley proves talkative when we catch up with him."

"One can only hope," Grissom agreed.


	23. Chapter 21

**Chapter 21**

* * *

"Rick, are you beginning to get the feeling that there's perpetually a full moon?" Catherine asked as they stared at the body lying on a jet ski rental dock at Lake Mead, lit up by police flood lights.

Warrick glanced up at the dark night sky with its near circle of moon.

"Grissom said it was full two days ago, but it sure feels like it still is. What the hell happened to _**this**_ guy?"

"Maybe he was in the water and was run over by a boat?"

The victim was lying on his back on a tarp, limbs splayed as they'd fallen when his corpse was pulled from the lake. He was dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt and covered with injuries, from the gaping wound in his abdomen to multiple lacerations on his face and extremities. The soles of the work boots he was still wearing were shredded. Warrick crouched down to get a closer look.

"Catherine? There's shrapnel in some of these wounds. And I don't think this laceration on his abdomen looks like a propeller injury."

Warrick looked up at the detective investigating the case. "Vega? We have any ID on this guy?"

"Not yet. We're waiting on checking for a wallet until the ME gets here—speak of the devil."

"Sorry guys," Dave Phillips bustled up. "Yet another busy night."

"No worries, Super Dave," Warrick replied, "but would you mind checking in his pockets for ID?"

"You done with photos?"

Warrick picked up his camera and snapped a couple of shots.

"He was found in the water. Police boat brought him in and deposited him here."

"So—probably not much for trace." He patted the corpse's front pockets, then reached around to feel the back.

"Bingo!" he exclaimed, pulling out a dripping wallet and handing it to Warrick. Warrick opened it to the driver's license and read the information off to Catherine.

"Joseph Lopez, 47. He's a resident of Pahrump."

"Well, let's go track down his family. Maybe if we know what he was doing out here we'll be able to find our crime scene."


	24. Chapter 22

**Chapter 22**

* * *

37 West Maple, Pahrump, the address on Lopez's driver's license was an older modest stucco ranch on a quiet suburban street. The yard was an unimaginative plot of sparse anemic grass but neat and well kept. Catherine led the way up the recently swept walk to a small concrete stoop and rang the bell just as the sun was rising.

Footsteps could be heard approaching the door.

"Joey?!" A tired and frazzled looking woman queried as she flung open the door, then stood stock still as she took in the presence of two LVPD Crime Scene Investigators and a uniformed officer standing on her porch. Her face blanched.

"Oh, no," she said faintly.

"Is this the residence of Joseph Lopez?" Catherine inquired gently.

"Yes, of course. I'm his wife." She looked past Catherine to the Pahrump officer. "Roger? Where is Joey? What's happened to him?" she demanded.

Catherine cleared her throat before speaking again. "Mrs. Lopez, I'm Catherine Willows from the Las Vegas Crime Lab. This is my colleague Warrick Brown and you obviously know Deputy Boone."

"We went to high school together," she answered softly.

"Pahrump is a small town," he confirmed, "but I didn't know Maria was married to Joseph Lopez."

"May we come in?" Catherine asked.

Mutely the woman stepped back from the door, holding it open. The trio on her stoop followed her in. She led the way into a small, spotless living room, then turned to Catherine.

"Where is my husband?"

"Mrs. Lopez, when was the last time you saw Joseph?"

"Last evening, when he left to go night fishing with my good-for-nothing brother-in-law. What happened to Joey?"

"Do you know where they were going?"

"Of course, to Lake Mead." She turned back to Deputy Boone. "Roger, tell me—where is Joey?"

"Maria, I'm really sorry to tell you that Joey was found floating in Lake

Mead this morning."

"Floating? In the water?" She turned back to Catherine. "Joey would never have been in the water. He can't swim. Are you sure you haven't made a mistake?"

Gently, Warrick produced a photo he'd taken for identification purposes, from an angle that minimized the visible damage to his face. His widow looked at the picture then crumpled suddenly into a chair, her body wracked with sobs. The team waited patiently for a few minutes. Deputy Boone crouched by the chair and held her hand tightly. Eventually the sobs began to slow.

"Is Martin dead too?" she queried between sniffles as she struggled to get herself under control.

"Martin?" Catherine asked.

"My son of a bitch brother-in-law."

Catherine and Warrick exchanged glances.

"So far," Warrick answered carefully, "we've only found the one body. Any idea where we might find Martin?"

"He lives a couple of streets over," she answered, and gave concise directions.


	25. Chapter 23

**Chapter 23**

* * *

Martin Lopez' truck was parked askew, half on his gravel drive, half on the dirt which filled the lot in front of his house. An empty boat trailer was hitched to it and stuck out into the street. It was a smaller house than his brother's, with none of the signs of proud ownership the other bungalow had demonstrated. The few things growing in Martin's yard were weeds, the walk littered with dirt and debris, the house covered with peeling paint. Warrick reached up to ring the bell, then noticed that the front door was slightly ajar. Signaling to Catherine to do the same, he silently drew his weapon and pushed the door a little wider.

"Mr. Lopez?" he called out, "LVPD. Are you all right, sir?" Deputy Boone led the way into the living room where they found Martin Lopez dressed in soggy clothes, passed out on the couch.

"Mr. Lopez?" Warrick shook his shoulder, gently at first, then more vigorously.

"Hmmmm?" Lopez stirred, then sat up, blearily eyeing the trio in his living room.

"Who're you?" he demanded. Warrick made brief introductions.

"Mr. Lopez?" Catherine inquired loudly, "Can you tell us what happened to you tonight?"

"Went fishin'," he answered groggily, looking at the floor and holding his head with both hands.

"Where did you go fishing?"

"Lake Mead."

"Can you be a little more specific, sir?"

"Middle of Lake Mead."

"How did you get there, sir?"

"Boat?"

"What boat?"

"M'boat."

"Sir, we didn't see a boat on your trailer. Do you know where it might be?"

"Joe has it." Catherine and Warrick exchanged glances.

"Your brother Joe has the boat you were fishing from?"

Martin started to nod his head vigorously, delighted he was making himself understood, but at the first bob he grabbed his head, turned green and heaved himself up, staggering into the bathroom where they could hear him retching. Catherine looked at Warrick.

"Better get in there to get your sample of emesis before he flushes the toilet." Throwing his supervisor a dirty look, Warrick grabbed gloves and an evidence cup and hurried into the bathroom. Martin Lopez emerged a few minutes later, looking only slightly less green. He sat back down on the couch and looked at Catherine enquiringly.

"Mr. Lopez, why are your clothes wet?"

"I fell off the boat."

"Into Lake Mead?"

He nodded, more gingerly this time.

"And how did you get home?"

"Swam ashore, walked to the marina, drove home."

"And what about Joe?"

"He's getting all the fish, the bastard!"

"Mr. Lopez, why don't you start at the beginning?"

"I wanted to go fishing, see, so I called Joe and asked him to go with me. Marie, his wife—do you know Marie?" Catherine nodded.

"Yes, sir, we've met."

"Well, then, you know. Marie didn't want him to go with me. She wanted him to start building a damn fence in their back yard, but I told him I'd help him with it tomorrow…" He looked at the window owlishly, "Today, I guess, so finally she said 'okay'. So we went out, got there just about dusk and headed out. We were having a great night—tons of fish—and talking, and drinking, and anyhow, I had to tap the bladder, you know, so I went up to the bow and was taking a piss when we must have hit a rock or something because there was this noise and I was thrown into the water. When I got to the surface, I looked around and couldn't see the boat. I yelled to Joey but he must not a been able to hear me because he didn't answer, we weren't that far from the shore, so I decided to swim in and head home. Son of a bitch leaves me in the water, he can figure out how to get his own damned sorry self home."

While Catherine talked to Lopez, Warrick wandered out and poked around a little. He came back into the living room and moved into the drunk man's line of sight.

"Mr. Lopez?"

"Hmmm?"

"Sir, I was just looking at your car and around the house, and I don't see any fishing tackle anywhere. I don't think I've ever met a fisherman who didn't have some tackle around somewhere."

Lopez stared at him, blinking as he processed the implied question.

"Oh, no, me and Joe? We're not fishermen. We don't have any of that junk."

"Well, then, how were you catching all of those fish?" Catherine queried.

"We read this article about Filipinos fishing with dynamite. You throw the lit stick in and the concussion stuns the fish so you can just scoop them up with nets. We thought we'd try it with M-16s. Worked real good too."

"So," Warrick concluded the story while waiting for assignments the next day. "Once he sobered up a little, he was able to get us close enough to find the outboard on the bottom of Lake Mead. Looks like they floated right over the top of one of the M-16s. Joseph, who was stone cold sober according to tox, and who must have been wondering what the hell he was doing out there in the middle of the night on the lake with that idiot, would have been sitting just behind the explosion and caught the brunt of it—shrapnel, flash burn from the gasoline tank going up. Even if he could swim, Doc's sure he was unconscious when he hit the water. He wasn't dead though—he had water in his lungs. Martin was standing on the bow relieving himself—the concussive force of the explosion knocked him unhurt into the water."

"And what's going to happen to Mr. Lopez?" Sara asked.

"He's facing a number of charges, including poaching, unlawful possession of explosives and involuntary manslaughter. Maybe not quite what he deserves, but at least he'll face some prison time. Give him an opportunity to think about what he did to his brother…"

"**Yet another lesson in why 'it seemed like a good idea at the time' rarely is…" Grissom intoned from the doorway.**


	26. Chapter 24

**Chapter 24**

* * *

Greg dropped his pencil on the lab table in frustration, and let out a huge sigh.

"We're getting no where with this!"

Nick looked at him evenly.

"That's the nature of the beast, Greg. And it isn't our job to solve the case, you know. Our job is to collect, analyze and interpret the evidence."

Greg looked at Nick skeptically.

"Yeah, and you never get involved in the cases."

"Well, we all do. But that doesn't mean that that's our job." He flashed Greg a grin. "Getting the guy? It's just one of the perks." Both men knew that very few crime labs would give them the opportunity to work on the police side of the investigation that Vegas did.

"Well, perks or no, we're banging our heads against a brick wall here, Nick."

Letting out a puff of air, Nick had to agree with him.

"So far we don't have a whole lot to go on, that's for sure." He paused. "And you know what Grissom says when you hit a brick wall…"

"Start over. Go back to the evidence."

"Right. So, let's start at the beginning. Go over what we DO know. And Greggo? You can go first…"


	27. Chapter 25

**Chapter 25**

* * *

It was only a couple of hours before the end of shift when Grissom finally chased Sara down in the locker room after looking for her all over the lab. He'd struggled the whole day while home together, trying to figure out how to bring up the upcoming boxing match, never succeeding. But time was ticking away, and the issue was causing a burning pain in his stomach. He felt like he'd really screwed up, and somehow he needed to make it right. With only a cursory glance around to make sure they were alone, he stood awkwardly in front of her, holding the tickets in his hand.

"Sara, I don't have to go tomorrow."

She looked at him, the man she had loved for so many years, the man who had finally become her lover eight months earlier, and shot him a quick smile.

"Gil, it's no problem, really. Go. You enjoy it. You'll have a good time."

"Jim only gave me the tickets because he can't use them. He won't mind if I pass them on to a couple of the guys."

"Seriously, just because I don't want to go doesn't mean you shouldn't…"

"I just wasn't thinking, Sara. It never occurred to me that you would object, since both of the participants are there voluntarily." He paused. "You and I processed the scene at a boxing match a couple of years ago. You didn't say anything about it then. If I'd known it bothered you…"

She cocked her head and looked at him thoughtfully.

"When have I ever wanted you to adjust the job for me? I've told you, I really want to put all that behind me. That was a murder scene like any other. We process them. But I have to say, that case didn't do anything to change my opinions about boxing." She paused, considering. "Actually, that's not true. I did gain a new appreciation for the dedication it takes to be a boxer; it just didn't change my mind about wanting to see a fight.

"And I don't object on any kind of moral grounds, you know. If two people choose to beat each other to a bloody pulp, causing concussions, cauliflower ears, detached retinas and eventually Parkinson's, I do think that's their god-given prerogative. That doesn't mean I want to watch. I saw enough beatings growing up not personally to consider them a particularly entertaining spectator sport. But I also understand that there's an art to boxing that I don't appreciate and you do. I don't expect you to give up things you love, or even things you just like, to be with me. You should go, have a good time. Are you sure Jim can't go with you? Or did he just not want to go alone? I know the review board cleared him in the shooting, but he still can't be having an easy time of it right now. I'm sure he could use some time with a friend. Or take Nick or Warrick with you. They'd probably love it. Warrick's a huge boxing fan."

Grissom smiled for a moment, noting appreciatively that Sara did _not_ suggest that he spend an evening with Greg, then responded seriously.

"It's just, we have so little time off together, I hate to waste an evening apart. And it's not like I'm a _**real**_ boxing fan or anything…"

"I love being with you, too," Sara pointed out. "But that doesn't mean we have to spend every moment we're off together. I've got plenty of reading to do, and Hank for company, and if you want, after the fight, I'll fix you a late dinner. Unless you'd rather have hotdogs at the match. But don't think for a minute that I hold you wanting to spend an evening doing something that doesn't interest me against you. You're the guy I love, beetles, tacos al pastor, 'pseudo' boxing fan and all."

She plucked one of the tickets and looked at it.

"Happy Morales. Now there's a name for a boxer…"


	28. Chapter 26

**Sunday**** 12-18-2005**

* * *

**Chapter 26**

* * *

"Déjà vu all over again," Greg breathed out softly. Nick looked at him with a soft smile.

"Don't let Grissom hear you say that. You'll be in for a ten minute lecture on unnecessary redundancy."

"Yeah, whatever. But aren't you getting goose bumps?"

Nick cast his eyes around the dark, shadowed alley, and the corpse beside a dumpster, sprawled prone on the tarmac in a pool of blood, arms outstretched, pants and underwear down around his ankles, gunshot to his left temple.

"Looks like another .22. And yes, it looks almost exactly the same."

"It even SMELLS the same."

"I'll bet Bobby gives us a match on the bullets."

"Maybe there'll be fluids this time."

"If we're lucky."

Detective Vartann approached them from the alley entrance, hearing their exchange.

"But there are some major differences. Mr. Hirsch here," he indicated the body, "wasn't gay. He was married with three young children. And his business here is a yarn and bookstore, with a teashop attached. He and his wife ran it together, with the kids playing in the corner. The kind of place where people came, bought a book and a cup of tea, and sat down to read. Or to knit. They closed early in the evening."

"Not much in common with a hip gay bar," Greg commented thoughtfully.

"Except that both businesses seem like the kind of places that create a sense of community," Nick commented.

"The kinds of places where you'd think SOMEONE would notice if another customer seemed off."

"Exactly."

"If they close early, why was Mr. Hirsch here tonight?"

"He stayed late to do the books. Working on closing out the finance records for the year."

"And the cash register?"

"Cleaned out like the other; so was the safe."

Nick looked at his partner.

"Okay, Greggo. Which do you want this time?"

"Let's keep it as consistent as possible. Make it more likely we'd pick up anything else the scenes have in common."

"Okay then. You get the alley, I get the body and the shop."

"Nick?" Greg called out from the end of the alley ten minutes later.

"Yeah, G?" the Texan answered, without looking up from the corpse.

"I've got boxes here from RNA Distributors. Weren't there boxes from them in the dumpster at the Tennant crime scene?"

"Yeah, and invoices from them in the office. They were his food supplier."

"Well, so far that's the only concrete connection I've found between the two alleys."

"A delivery guy would know how to come in through the back."

"And since most food deliveries are made early in the morning, he wouldn't necessarily have any reason to think that these two owners would be here late at night. Especially if he were accustomed to seeing both of them in the wee hours. Not too many owners burn the candles quite so much at both ends."

"Does make you wonder if there've been any other robberies at places supplied by RNA Distributors, doesn't it?" He pulled out his phone, and called Vartann, who had left to canvas the area.

"Hey, Alex? Nick. Listen, here's something you might want to look into…"


	29. Chapter 27

**Monday 12-19-2005**

* * *

**Chapter 27**

* * *

"Officer Metcalf, we're having a--" Catherine hesitated, looking for the right word, "bizarre—week or two, don't you think?"

"CSI Willows. CSI Brown. Wait until you see _this_ one!" He led the way down a steep path that led down a steep arroyo. The 419 lay in the middle of the creek bed, face up on the stones with a couple inches of water trickling around him. His feet were suspended three feet in the air by a series of bungee cords tied end-to-end, attached to the railing of the bridge hundreds of feet above. A helmet, still hanging from his chin by the leather chinstrap, was split in two, and the skull underneath didn't look like it was in much better shape. Pieces of brain matter dotted a few of the surrounding rocks. Dave Phillips crouched beside the corpse. Warrick looked the scene up and down with wide-eyed amazement.

"What the hell is this?" he asked.

Metcalf answered, for once without his trademark smirk. His usual disdain for the "geek squad" had waned with the series of bizarre cases they'd been handling together.

"So far it looks like he decided to try bungee jumping with a home-made rig."

Catherine looked all the way up the knotted cord to the bridge far overhead.

"When you bungee jump, you aren't supposed to reach the ground. Did something come loose?"

Metcalf raised an eyebrow and shrugged.

"We found the guy's car." He pointed up beside the bridge. Warrick followed the finger with his eyes and sighed.

"All right, Cath. You take the body and the scene down here. I'll take the top and the car."

Setting his shoulders in a determined fashion, he started the long hike back up the side of the arroyo.

Not long after she'd seen Warrick finally reach the top, the phone on Catherine's belt warbled its trademarked "direct connect" squeal.

"What's up, Warrick?"

"Cath? You're not going to believe this. There are a ton of notes in the car. Really meticulous measurements and calculations—exactly how far from the bridge to the creek bed, how many bungee cords, even how much length is given up in knotting the cords together."

"So can you tell? What went wrong?"

"As far as I can tell, he didn't take into account the fact that loaded bungee cords stretch."


	30. Chapter 28

**Chapter 28**

* * *

Jim Brass stepped out the front door of the LVPD rubbing a hand across the back of his neck. What a week!! He knew scientists said there was nothing to the full moon thing, but you couldn't prove it by him. The crazies were out en mass. He'd just finished eighteen hours on and couldn't wait to hit the sheets. But first he needed to grab something to eat. Thinking back, he realized he'd missed two meals; he was starving and was craving a Cran-Slam Club from Capriottis. It was out of his way, but no one else made a sandwich like that…

Brass headed in towards downtown Vegas on the 15 and then cut west on 95. He exited south on Angel Drive, then turned west on West Charleston Boulevard where he pulled into the Capriottis' parking lot. Five minutes later he was back in his car, imagining sinking his teeth into the stacked sandwich, the unique flavor bathing his tongue and dragging him back to the first time he'd ever had one of the sandwiches, nearly twenty-five years earlier when he'd been a happily married man, practically a newlywed, and he and his wife had gone on vacation on the Delaware shore. The marriage may have long since ended, but he'd thanked his lucky stars when the first Capriotti's franchise opened in Vegas.

On the way home he stayed on West Charleston further, turning north on South Valley View Parkway. He was running on automatic, letting the car take him home, already mentally in his kitchen taking his first bite of that delicious sandwich when a couple coming out of Photos and Flower's Garden Café caught his attention.

The café was just south of Meadows Mall and Brass had been vaguely aware of it, although he'd never been there. Somewhere he'd heard the french toast was good. They made a good-looking couple, the man only slightly taller than the woman, moving together with the easy familiarity of long-standing intimacy. She was looking up into his eyes and laughing, her own eyes sparkling. His hand rested in the small of her back, and his attention was focused entirely on her. Jim Brass would have known them at five hundred yards in the middle of the night in a rainstorm; across the street in the bright morning sunshine, Gil Grissom and Sara Sidle were unmistakable. For two normally observant people, they were clearly oblivious to the passing traffic, or anything other than each other, for which Brass was grateful, as they both knew his car well, and he had a feeling they wouldn't be very happy if they were aware they'd been observed.

The traffic light turned red and Brass found himself in the uncomfortable situation of being forced to stop in traffic with a perfect view of two of his friends who were clearly involved in an intimate relationship right under the noses of the investigators of the number-two crime lab in the country. Grissom moved his hand from Sara's back and took her hand instead. Turning together, they began to amble down the street, clearly enjoying their few hours of freedom—and the golden sunshine—as much as Brass was himself. They strolled half-way up the block where they stopped and Grissom opened the passenger door to the vintage Beemer that he reserved for pleasure driving and handed Sara into the car, bending for a quick kiss before closing her in.


	31. Chapter 29

**Tuesday 12-20-2005**

* * *

**Chapter 29**

* * *

Sara was sitting at Grissom's kitchen island Tuesday evening, waiting for the omelets he was fixing for dinner, when her cell phone rang. He was closer to their "heading out the door" pile, keys, phones, etc., and grabbed it, checking the caller ID. Raising an eyebrow, he handed the phone to Sara.

"Catherine."

Returning his look with an equally perplexed one, Sara answered the phone.

"Sidle."

"Sara, it's Catherine. Listen, I know this is probably earlier than you were planning on heading in to work, but is there any chance you could come now and pick me up at West Craig and Clayton? My car died, and I seem to have left my wallet at home, so I don't have money for a cab. Warrick's home with Tina, and Nick, Greg and Grissom all live the opposite direction, and I knew you'd have to drive this way to get to work."

Sara hesitated, her heart sinking. Grissom gave her a questioning look, and grabbing a nearby notepad and pen, she wrote, "C needs ride. Called me because she's stuck between my apt and work." His expression mirrored her own disappointment.

"Sara? Are you there?"

"Yeah, sorry, Catherine. I'm just waking up. Of course I'll pick you up. Do you think you could give me an hour? I still need to grab a shower and something to eat."

"Don't worry about eating. I'll treat you to dinner. Just please come and get me."

"Okay. I'll be there as soon as I can." She hung up the phone, and looked at Grissom.

"Well, that puts an abrupt end to our evening."

"At least eat first. Your eggs are almost done. You're doing Catherine a favor. She can wait." He paused. "And I'm not quite ready to give up on our private time."

"Okay, Bugman. Feed me. But then I need to go." She raised an eyebrow at him. "So, if Catherine left her wallet at home, how do you suppose she's planning on treating me to dinner?"

He tilted his head, considering. "Either she's planning to hit the vending machines at work with the quarters in her desk, or you'd be fronting her the cash."

"Either way, good thing I have a personal chef," and she settled down to wait for her omelet.

It was a frustrated Catherine Willows who slid irritably into Sara's new car almost an hour later.

"Thanks. The motor just overheated. I don't know what's wrong with it. And I couldn't figure out who else to call."

Sara looked past her curiously.

"So, where' s your vehicle?"

"The tow truck just took it. I'll talk to my mechanic later. But right now I really need to get back to the lab. Warrick and I have had so many cases recently, I'm really behind on paperwork. I figured you wouldn't mind going in early, you're always there anyway."

With a sigh she settled into the seat and snapped her belt. Sara put the car in gear and started forward. As she relaxed, Catherine became aware of the song on the stereo.

_Now there's a beautiful river in the valley ahead_

_There 'neath the oak's bough, soon we will be wed_

_Should we lose each other in the shadow of the evening trees_

_I'll wait for you_

_And should I fall behind_

_Wait for me._

She looked at Sara curiously.

"The Boss? I would have taken you more for Indy-folksy music."

"I've been a fan since I saw him in concert when I was in college. This is 'Live in Dublin'. It's a pretty folksy album, don't you think? If you don't like it, I think there's a Tish Hinojosa album in the CD changer. Oh, and Mozart's Violin Concertos."

"Of course there is. You and Grissom. I should have known."

Sara looked over at her sharply.

"Known what?"

"You know—you intellectuals, who listen to classical music. I know Grissom does. I should have guessed that you do too."

"Oh, yeah… I took a music appreciation class in college. I'm not an expert on classical music; I just like a lot of the music."


	32. Chapter 30

**Chapter 30**

* * *

"I'm almost afraid to ask what we have this time," Warrick greeted Metcalf.

"This time you're going to have to tell me. I haven't got a clue, other than that Karl Goren, 17, appears to have fallen from the top of this water tower. Why he was there and how he fell—that part is for you to figure out."

Warrick looked over and met Catherine's gaze, then gave his head a small jerk in the direction of the water tower.

"Shall we?"

"Let's do it."

Crime Scene kits in hand, they walked side by side to the base of the tall structure where a body laid sprawled, lit by portable lights. Karl Goren was on his stomach, head turned to his side, eyes open, blood pooled under his head. A smashed beer can was on the ground beside him, foam and beer soaking the ground around it.

As one, the two investigators looked up at the structure.

"Flip to see who climbs?" Warrick suggested.

"No way, not this time. Seniority has its privileges. And be sure to print the ladder on your way up…"

An hour later Warrick stood at the top of the ladder and looked around. The top of the water tower was flat and surrounded by a double rail offset about a foot off of the edge of the tower. A beer case stood near the middle of the open surface, full beer inside, flattened empty cans on the ground around it, and near the railing were five more beer cans, four full cans sitting in a neat cluster right at the edge, and an empty can on its side nearby. Warrick made his way over to that part of the tower and peered carefully over the side. On the side of the tower were several scuff marks.

Warrick pulled out his phone and called Catherine.

"Cat, there's a really ugly picture coming together up here. Is Dave finished with the body yet?" He'd seen the Assistant ME pull up awhile earlier from his vantage point on the ladder.

"Just about. What's up?"

"First, check the toes of his shoes, would you?"

There was a pause as she made her way back to the body.

"They've got something on them. Rust maybe? With some paint chips?"

"And how about his hands and chest?"

"He's got abrasions on his hands." Warrick heard her address the assistant coroner. "Dave? Mind taking a look at his chest?" There was another pause, and then she was back on with Warrick. "There's a horizontal bruise about five centimeters high that runs across his chest. What have you got, Rick?"

"I think I know what happened. But we need to find the witnesses."

"Witnesses?"

"If I'm right, Mr. Goren was NOT alone at the top of this tower."

"What do you mean?"

"You and Metcalf come on up and I'll show you."

Catherine stood back from the edge of the water tower, trying to ignore the 165' drop. It made her feel slightly better to see that Metcalf stood shakily in the precise middle of the tower and looked even greener than she felt. Getting him back down the ladder was going to be a treat.

"Okay, Rick. Tell us."

Warrick started by waving a hand at the horizon where the lights of the Strip glowed warm and invitingly.

"First of all, take a look at this view."

Catherine did as he asked.

"Beautiful."

"And the tower is isolated. No one nearby to see people at the base, or climbing the ladder. I'll bet this is a popular spot with teenagers."

Metcalf nodded.

"It's a pretty well known attractive hazard. The city made the owners put up that new fence around the base, but the kids just climb over…"

"And that's what happened tonight." Rick shone his light on the partially emptied suitcase of cheap beer sitting near where Metcalf was standing. A couple of empties lay on their sides nearby. "But for some reason tonight they weren't satisfied with just stargazing." He moved his light to the cluster of cans near the railing. He could see that Catherine and Metcalf didn't get it yet.

"These were Goren's beers. Or five of the six." He waited, and Catherine nodded slowly. "The sixth is on the ground beside his body."

Warrick agreed.

"Now take a look at the railings, and the side of the tower. There are scuff marks on the side of the tank that I think will match up with his shoes, and I think the railings are going to match up with the bruises on his torso. What I figure is that Goren bet his friends that he could drink a six pack while hanging off of the edge. When he realized he was in trouble, he struggled to get back up, but the way the bars are offset from the top kept him from being able to pull himself back up."

"But if his friends were up here with him…"

"Why didn't they help him? That's a question we'll have to put to them once we find them." He eyed the smashed beer cans sitting near the case and grinned at her cheekily. "Think I can get useable prints off of a crushed can?"

"I've heard rumors YOU can get prints off of air."

"Well, I did just get prints off of a live snake…"


	33. Chapter 31

**Chapter 31**

* * *

"You know, Gris, just because I choose not to eat meat doesn't mean that you have to have just vegetables for Christmas Eve dinner."

Sara looked up from the layout table where Keri Johnson's clothing was spread out to judge his reaction to her comment and found him contemplating her.

"I don't mind. I've grown quite accustomed to not eating meat very often over the last couple of years, and when we share a meal, eating what you're eating is no hardship for me. Besides, I think you promised me cheese soufflé with hollandaise. How much more could I ask for?"

She turned her gaze back to the evidence.

"It's just—I know that's not what Christmas dinner was like when you were growing up, and if you'd like, I could make a roast and Yorkshire pudding, like your mom used to."

Grissom found himself momentarily speechless, unsure whether he found it more amazing that Sara remembered such a casually mentioned thing, or that it continued to surprise him that she catalogued those comments as carefully as she did, aware too of the generosity Sara was offering him, knowing as he did that just the sight of raw meat turned her stomach. He thought back to an off-handed remark he'd made about the Christmas dinners of his childhood while he and Sara were sorting through his mother's kitchen cabinets, clearing out her house following her unexpected death the previous June.

"Sara, is that why you brought my mom's roast pan and casserole back with us?"

Without looking up from the evidence on the table, Sara nodded her head once.

"I thought you might want…" She paused, spotting something on the jumper. "Gilbert, hand me the—" she held her hand out as she asked, not finishing her request before the ALS was in her palm and lights were clicked off. Grissom was barely aware of handing her the light source and flipping the switch, as he still pondered Sara's deep intrinsic understanding of him.

He thought back nearly three years to a time when he had momentarily entertained the idea that another woman had truly understood him. How he had ever mistaken Las Vegas madam Heather Kessler's professionally honed skills of observation and resulting apparent insights for anything more, anything real, escaped him. The other woman had re-entered his life at the very nadir of his relationship with Sara, but he was loath to use his emotional turmoil as an excuse for his blindness.

Not that he didn't still have a deep affection for the dominatrix. People who lived life by their own rules had always appealed to him. But he no longer mistook her professional tools for anything more. Despite her very real regard for him, her apparent ability to read him was generic—as unlike Sara's deeply personal understanding as possible. With a mental shake he redirected his attention to the clothing Sara was examining on the layout table.

"You got something?"

"I think there may be semen under some of the blood. I'll get the sample to Wendy. Maybe we just got lucky. Maybe we do have something with which to nail Teal Benchley."

"Or clear him," Grissom cautioned.

In the corridor outside the layout room, Nick and Warrick paused on their way to grab a quick bite together before getting back to work on their respective cases when they caught sight of Sara and Grissom reviewing their evidence on the giant table. Nick hesitated, watching through the glass.

"Fred and Ginger," he murmured to himself.

"What's that?" Warrick asked.

"Have you ever seen a Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movie?"

"Maybe with my Gran, but not that I remember clearly.

"Oh, man, do you and Tina need to rent _Shall We Dance_!"

"And why is that?"

"Fred and Ginger had this thing, like each one knew what the other was thinking, what the other was going to do, before they did it. It was this—connection. Like they could read each other's minds, anticipate each other's moves."

Together they looked across at their two colleagues working the evidence in easy camaraderie.

"Isn't there some saying about Ginger doing everything Fred did—" Warrick mused.

Nick nodded then gestured across the lab with his chin as Sara, without looking up or breaking her rhythm reached down and picked something up holding it out, just as Grissom wordlessly turned and reached for it.

"But backwards and in high heels," Nick completed.

Warrick contemplated his coworkers for a moment before responding.

"I always thought they were more Mulder and Scully."

Nick shook his head. "Mulder and Scully talked. And came at things from completely different points of view."

"Haven't you ever seen them when they think no one else is around? They talk constantly."

"Maybe so, but they don't _have_ to."

"In any case, it's good to see them getting along again. Those were a long couple of years…"

"Yeah, and Sara seemed so unhappy."

"And an unhappy Sara can be a force to be reckoned with."

Nick shook his head. He was the one member of the team who'd welcomed Sara from the start. Their friendship had been instant and ran deep, despite a period friction between them over competition for a job that had never materialized. And Sara had been an utterly dependable source of quiet support for him since his kidnapping. It had been deeply painful to him when she had been seeped in a persistent sadness he couldn't reach. Sara's occasional acerbic comments were the least of his concerns.

"She's been much happier the last year or so," Nick mused.

"Finally decided to give up on Grissom and get on with her life, I suppose."

"Yeah, maybe…" he murmured, still watching the instinctive dance going on between the two people on the other side of the glass.


	34. Chapter 32

**Chapter 32**

* * *

"Hey, Harvard, how about we take a break and get something to eat?"

Sara looked up and, rolling her shoulders, glanced at the clock.

"Sounds like a good idea. What do you want?"

"I asked Catherine to pick up a couple of fruit salads and put them in the fridge for us when she went out earlier."

"Gotta love a man who thinks ahead. Do you suppose there's any chance Greg's made a pot of coffee recently?"

"We can but hope. Let's go see."

They'd just exited the room, locking the door to preserve the chain of evidence, and headed for the break room when they heard their names being called.

"So, Gil, Sara, listen to this one!"

Jim Brass and Sofia Curtis strode down the wide crime lab corridor shoulder-to-shoulder, both grinning as they approached the investigators.

"What's up with you two?"

"We just got back from the airport," Sofia explained.

"McCarren?"

"Yeah."

"Because?"

"We collared a pickpocket."

"That required two detectives?" He looked at Sofia. "Does it tie in to the Johnson murder?"

"Nah, it was just too good to pass up on," Brass replied for her.

"A pickpocket?"

"Yeah, so Charlie Regan—do you know Charlie Regan?"

Sara shook her head while Grissom replied, "I don't think I've had the pleasure."

"Well, Charlie's kind of a frequent flyer, always petty stuff, so he's never away for long; he used to frequent the crowds on Fremont Street and the Strip, but surveillance cameras are getting better and better, so he figured he'd give his magic fingers a try at the airport."

"'Cause there's no security there?" queried Sara.

"Yeah, well, I didn't say that he was bright. So, anyhow, tonight, he's wandering around there and sees a crowd gathering. He can't see the front of the group, but he does spy a guy off to one side at the back who's intently watching what was going on. He's a lanky black guy with kind of a foreign look and the top of his wallet sticking invitingly out of his back pocket. Charlie works his way up to the guy and slick as can be has the wallet and starts to slip away. He's made it maybe twenty or thirty feet and thinks he's home free when a whoop goes up and he looks back to see his victim standing, pointing at him and yelling. Now Charlie is one fast little dude and he knows his way around the airport, so he takes off running, but the pigeon and this other guy take off after him. What he doesn't know is that the crowd was there to greet the Kenyan National Track and Field team, which is in town for an international meet. He walked up on a press conference. The second guy who took off after him was in the process of being interviewed when he picked this guy's pocket—he holds the world's record in the 300 meter. And the victim? He was the BIG star, waiting in the wings for his interview. He's the mile record holder. Poor Charlie didn't have a chance in hell outrunning these guys. Even with his lead, I don't think he got twenty more feet."

"And the kicker?" Sofia added, chuckling. "The crew filming the interview? They got the whole thing on tape."


	35. Chapter 33

**Wednesday 12-21-2005**

* * *

**Chapter 33**

* * *

In the lab, Warrick carefully gloved and removed the smashed beer cans he'd recovered at the top of the water tower from the sealed brown paper evidence bags he'd carefully stored them in. First, he swabbed around the opening of each and sealed the swabs for the DNA lab. He also dumped any remaining liquid from each of the cans into a sterile evidence jar. Depending on the techniques used, fingerprinting was generally the last stage of evidence collection, short of techniques that required destruction of the object itself, as many of the methods used to recover fingerprints destroyed other evidence that might be present.

Despite his bravado with Catherine earlier, Warrick knew that generally the recovery of fingerprints from crushed cans was fairly straightforward, if time consuming and requiring of patience. And ironically, the crushed aspects of the can might have protected prints from being obliterated in the collection, transport and processing of the evidence. Gloved hands didn't LEAVE fingerprints, but they could wipe them off just as easily as anything else. So, for that matter, could rattling around in whatever container the evidence was stored in for transport.

Starting with the first can, he began to gently unfold and untwist the can. He'd chosen one of the easier ones to start with. It was accordioned in at the middle, and not crushed flat like some of the others. But the same technique would work with them, and likely he'd be able to get some good prints, if not with fingerprint powder, then with cyanoacrylate fumes. Warrick knew some labs preferred vacuum metal deposition or use of special stains over fuming for prints on non-porous surfaces, but in his book there was nothing that compared to fuming with superglue. Not that he didn't adjust and use the best technique for each situation, but he'd found that either conventional dusting or fuming virtually always worked.

By the time Warrick had unfolded the first can, he'd decided to fume the cans rather than dust them. The lab had a designated fuming chamber, but not being particularly fond of cleaning the superglue deposits off of glass, an essential job as the presence of deposits stimulated polymerization of other deposits, thereby pulling the fumes away from the items being examined, and requiring more and more superglue to get the job done, Warrick preferred fuming in a cardboard box that he could throw away once the buildup got too heavy. Normally with cans, tipping the can up and leaning it in a corner did a good job of exposing the majority of the surface area to the fumes, but with only four corners to a box, and eleven cans to be fumed, Warrick used a large paperclip tied to a string and placed crosswise inside the opening of each can to suspend them from a rod laid across the top of the carton.

He carefully put a small dish of single layer aluminum foil on the coffee warmer at the bottom of the box and placed a nickel-sized glob of superglue in the middle. He also placed a cup of hot water in the box, and, against the wall off to one side, an additional piece of aluminum foil with a test print he'd made by rubbing his thumb on the side of his nose and then pressing it onto the foil.

Closing the box, Warrick turned on the cup warmer and set a timer for five minutes. While it fumed, he quickly ran the swabs he'd collected around the corner to the DNA lab. When the timer dinged, he checked the test print to make sure the deposition of cyanoacrylate wasn't too heavy, then set the timer for another five minutes. This time, when it chimed, he turned off the heating element and checked the test print again. Perfect! Now, to see what he'd found…


	36. Chapter 34

**Chapter 34**

* * *

It was mid-shift when Wendy paged Sara to the DNA lab.

"Hey, Wendy."

"Hey. I just finished with that sample you brought me yesterday."

"Anything?"

"Well, your instincts were good. There was semen mixed in with the blood, and I was able to isolate a sample to run. I also ran it against the exemplar we have from Elliott, and the two samples share half of their alleles. The sample also lacks any commonality with the blood, which matches Elliott's mom, so that rules out a brother. Any chance you're looking at the kid's father for this?"

"Yeah, we are."

"Well, I think you've got your murderer."

"Thanks, Wendy. I'll let Sofia know. Now, if we could just find him…"


	37. Chapter 35

**Chapter 35**

* * *

"Hey, Sara? You almost done? Want to grab a drink after shift?"

Sara looked up from the microscope and stretched, glad of the distraction. Sometimes going through the motions in the lab was hard for Sara when the counter work was getting her nowhere and she wanted to be out in the field, tracking down the perp. In forensics, every "i" needed to be dotted and every "t" crossed, and she understood that. It would be the wrong field for someone short on patience. And Sara was nothing if not patient. But that still didn't always keep her neck and shoulder muscles from getting tight.

"Oh, hey, Nick!"

The Texan leaned against the doorframe in a casual pose, but something in his expression made Sara swallow the refusal she'd been about to offer.

"Everything okay?"

"Yeah, sure," he answered quickly, the haunted look in his eye if anything increasing, belying his words.

"Okay. Just give me a few minutes to finish up and check out with Grissom."

He nodded and moved away from the door.

Sara finished scanning the slides without finding anything probative, logged them back into the evidence lockers, and cleaned up the lab before heading to her supervisor's office. She paused, as she so often did, at the doorway of the dimly lit room, drinking in the sight of him bent over his paperwork, desk lamp highlighting his curls, throwing his bearded features into sharp contrast.

"Hey, Bugman."

He looked up quickly at her voice, his eyes going from sharply alert to invitingly soft and warm as they visually caressed her. His voice when he spoke was low and intimate.

"Hi."

"I didn't get anywhere with the slides."

He sighed, pulling off his reading glasses and rubbing his eyes.

"No big surprise, but…"

"Anyhow, I'm getting ready to get out of here, but I wanted to let you know, I'm going to stop with Nick and get a drink on the way home."

"What's going on?"

"I don't know, but—something."

He nodded, thoughtfully. "He's only been back at work for three months. He's seemed—better, but I suppose… And we've had some tough cases recently. Where are you going?"

"He didn't say."

"If you went to the Pepper Mill, I could just happen to drop in for a drink in, say, an hour or two, and could drive you home."

Sara hesitated, but he pressed his case, unwilling to even contemplate a replay of the night when he'd gone to LVPD to pick up Sara after she was stopped for a DUI.

"I promise, I won't intrude unless you give me the high sign."

"Should I caw like a crow if the coast is clear?" she asked with a smile.

"How about just sitting so Nick's back is to the door. You can wave when you see me if it's all right for me to join you. Otherwise I'll sit at the bar and you can 'notice' me when you're leaving."

"Don't forget you're driving me home." Not much point, Sara thought, in having a designated driver if he'd been drinking too.

"One scotch, and then I'll switch to water. I'll drive Nicky home too, so you can buy as many rounds as you want," he added reasonably. "And that way, I'll be sure I get to see you tonight."

"Sounds like a good plan. Thanks."

He touched two fingers to his forehead in a 'goodbye' salute, his attention already back on the work in front of him. Sara watched for a moment more, then turned and went in search of Nick.

She found him in the locker room, sitting alone on the bench, staring blindly at his closed locker. Sara studied him unnoticed for a minute before striding the rest of the way in, saying, "I'm good to go, Nick. How about you?"

He looked at her unseeingly, then gave himself a little shake.

"Yeah, sure, Sara. Let's go."

"How about the Peppermill? We can carpool. I'll drive if you want. Let you ride in my new Prius…"

"Huh? Yeah, sure. That's fine."

Nick stood and seemed to gather himself before flashing Sara a heart-melting smile, walking up to her and throwing an arm over her shoulders.

"All right, you and me, Darlin', and the Peppermill's best brew…"

Not surprisingly, the Peppermill was quiet in the early morning, so Nick and Sara had no trouble getting an out of the way booth. Sara slid in first, facing the door, and Nick sat opposite her. The waitress caught Sara's eye and indicated she'd be right over, which she was.

"Hi, Nick, Sara."

"Hey, Connie," Sara answered.

"I haven't seen you in awhile. The rest of the team coming?"

"No," answered Sara. "Just the two of us."

"So what can I get you?"

"How about a pitcher of Sam Adams?" Nick asked, catching Sara's eye assuring himself of her agreement.

"And maybe, what, potato skins with—"

"I know, no bacon, and peanut butter on the side," Connie finished for her with a smile. Sara smiled back.

"And…" she looked at Nick enquiringly.

"Umm…" He paused, thinking, "fried mushrooms ?"

Sara nodded.

"Got it. I'll bring your beer now, and the food should be up soon."

A few minutes later, frosty mug filled with cold beer in front of him, Nick again pondered the impulse which had lead him to ask Sara to join him. Sure, she was one of his closest friends, but there was more to it than that.

Ever since his return to active duty, he'd found Sara the easiest of his colleagues to be around. Not that everyone hadn't been caring and supportive, but he could tell the others were more uncomfortable dealing with what had happened. It was as if no one knew what to say, and as a result, the topic remained a huge flashing neon purple elephant in the room. Catherine hovered. Warrick pretended it hadn't happened. Not that he'd seen much of Warrick away from work anyway.

Since Rick's marriage to Tina, their relationship had changed. Not that their friendship wasn't as strong as ever, but it had inexorably altered, and while once he might have chosen Warrick for company on a night like this one, when his empty house and the probable nightmares that awaited him there were overwhelming, it was no longer something he felt comfortable asking. Rick had a wife to get home to, one he didn't see nearly enough of.

His relationship with Greg was too much of a mentor/big brother kind of thing for him to feel comfortable turning to the younger man for support, and as for Archie, while he'd been spending some time with Archie recently, their friendship remained pretty casual.

But Sara, Sara neither asked intrusive questions nor shied away from the topic. Nick thought back to just before Halloween, to the Cassie McBride case, when Sara was concerned—and rightly so, he had to admit—that his obsession with finding the child, and his loss of control when he slammed a suspect in the little girl's kidnapping up against an interrogation room wall, trying to scare him into revealing the child's fate, was because his own experiences last spring were coloring his handling of the case. She'd called him on it, but oh, so gently, concerned not nearly as much about the case as his state of mind. He didn't understand how she instinctively knew exactly the right tone to take, not when he himself had no idea what he needed, but he was grateful for it.

"So, Nick, how are you, really?" Sara asked, taking an appreciative swig of icy cold beer, her alert eyes carefully scanning his face.

Nick started to give one of his standard non-answers, "Above ground," "I'm fine," "back on the ball," but swallowed the words. Why ask Sara to go out with him if not to be honest? Not that he needed to spill his guts or anything, but at least he could drop some of his defenses.

"I'm having nightmares," he told her, his eyes on the table.

"Not surprising," she replied, matter-of-factly. "The first year after an emotional trauma is the worst, and it's only been six months. Don't worry, it'll get better. Are you getting any counseling?"

"I met with a psychologist while I was in the hospital, but not since. First I went home and stayed with my parents, and then when I came back…"

"I can give you the name of a good counselor, if you'd like," she said casually.

He looked up at her then, seeing no pity, just friendship and that unique and inexplicable understanding. "Yeah. Maybe. Thanks."

"Pretty rough cases we've had the last few months."

"Aren't they always?"

"Hmmmm," she replied noncommittally. "Sometimes worse that others."

"Yeah." He thought about his frantic search for Cassie, the investigation of the officer-involved Bell shooting, the disappearance of little Jesse Matthews, and about his long, long climb down into an abandoned bunker, heart pounding, cold sweat pouring off of him, knowing that almost a dozen bodies awaited him below.

"Kelly Gordon came by the lab last week," he told her evenly, referring to the daughter of the man who had abducted him. Her father's belief that she had been railroaded into prison had been his motivation for the kidnapping.

"What!? When? What was she there for?"

"She wanted… she said… Sara, I'm not really sure. I'd gone to see her once, while she was in prison."

"Why?"

"I don't know. I guess I just—I had just gotten out of the hospital, and I wanted to let her know that I didn't blame her for what her dad had done."

"How was it, seeing her again?"

"It was weird. Brought the nightmares back for a couple of nights. I hadn't been having them _**every**_ night recently, but since I saw Kelly…"

"Did she threaten you or anything?"

"No, she just said she was thinking about what I'd told her, that she should put the past behind her. And then she left."

"And are you okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I think I am. And how about you, Sar? You seem like you've been good recently."

"Yeah, yeah, I have." She looked at him carefully, gauging whether or not to finish her thought. "I think that what happened to you really made the rest of us value what we have here, this family we've created. I love you guys, you know."

He reached over and took her hand, and gave her a thousand watt Stokes cowboy smile.

"Yeah, we know." He paused, his expression becoming more serious. "It's been nice to see you happy, Honey. It'd been awhile."

"It's nice to feel that way," Sara replied softly. "I wish I thought you were happier right now." Their eyes met and held, barriers dropped. Nick started to speak, but just then Connie bustled up with their mushrooms and potato skins. They dropped hands and both straightened up, away from the table.

"Here you are, guys. Sorry it took so long."

"Thanks, Connie," Nick told her. She moved off and he looked back at Sara. Moment broken, he knew he was off the hook, and yet…

"I'm not," he answered carefully, "unhappy. I mean, I'd love to not be waking up with nightmares, and to not have my emotions so close to the surface sometimes. When I slammed that kid up against the wall in Pioche, I couldn't believe it was me doing it, you know? But I'm not going through my days miserable or anything. I wish more people weren't so careful around me, but…"

"They're just like that because they care about you, Nicky. They want to be supportive, but they don't want to bring up bad memories, so they try to walk a tightrope, and sometimes their feet land wrong."

"I understand that. Doesn't always make it easier to take."

"No, it doesn't."

"Why don't yours?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Why don't your feet ever land wrong? I've been trying to figure it out, Sar. You're the one person who doesn't ever seem to put a foot wrong. You always seem to know the right thing to say or do, even when I don't know what it would be. Well, you and Grissom, but that's just because he's Grissom. He never says anything anyway."

"Of all of us, I think he had the hardest time when you were gone, and that's saying a lot," Sara replied, casually redirecting the conversation.

"Grissom?!"

Sara grinned at his surprise.

"Yeah, Gil Grissom. He may not go around broadcasting his emotions, but he's a man of deep feelings. He loves you, Nick. He was terrified when you were abducted. And he felt guilty for not keeping you safe."

"Guilty?! I was the idiot who never even saw Gordon coming. And Michaels was the idiot who was supposed to be watching my back. I wasn't even part of the night shift at the time. In no way was it his responsibility."

"But you're his guy. We all are. And he hates that he can't protect us all the time."

"Well, I'll take your word for it, Sar. If anyone knew what was going on behind that enigmatic expression, I guess it would be you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing. Just—there's always been something between the two of you, something nice. As if you have some fundamental understanding of each other that the rest of us don't get." He paused and took a sip of beer. "Doesn't always keep him from being a bastard towards you, but it's still there. And the bastard part seems like it's been better recently."

"Yeah, I think we finally reached detente." She looked up past him, towards the entrance to the lounge. "Speak of the devil."

Surprised, Nick swiveled and saw Grissom at the hostess' stand, pointing at the bar.

"Hey, Gris," he called, attracting his supervisor's attention. "Come join us."

Grissom approached the table hesitantly.

"Nick, Sara. You sure you don't mind? I wouldn't want to interrupt…"

Sara gave him a reassuring grin. "Sit down, Gris. We were just discussing world peace."

Throwing her a puzzled look, he paused, then slid in next to her, his thigh under the table pressed tightly against hers. Nick looked towards the bar.

"Hey, Connie, mind getting us another mug?" Then he turned his attention to Grissom.

"So, what brings you out at this hour of the morning?"

"Just didn't feel like going home to an empty house quite yet. Figured I'd grab a drink here, check out the headlines on CNN, then go home and try to sleep. How about the two of you?"

"Pretty much the same, only I coerced Sara into keeping me company."

Connie dropped a fresh frosted mug on the table and Nick poured Grissom a beer. Sara raised hers in the air, waiting until the men mimicked her action.

"To friendship," she toasted, taking a long draught from her pint glass.

"Here, here," and "to friendship" Nick and Grissom replied.


	38. Chapter 36

**Thursday 12-22-2008**

* * *

**Chapter 36**

* * *

Detective Alex Vartann met the Crime Scene Investigators at the curb when they rolled up in their charcoal Denali in front of one of a seemingly endless row of identical houses, just starting to show their age, the kind that had taken over greater Las Vegas, housing family after family moving to the Nevada desert, chasing the American Dream. Nothing distinguished the stucco house from its neighbors, the pallor of disappointed ambition and desert dust coating the entire neighborhood uniformly. The name 'Daniels' was on the mailbox in peel-off reflective letters, the "e" holding on by just a single corner. Nick and Greg were starting their shift hours early, in order to be in on the bust.

"Mario Daniels is a delivery driver from RNA Distributors. In the ten months he's been working for them there have been twenty three break ins at places on his delivery route, but he goes all over the area, so they've been scattered between different jurisdictions. No one had made the connection between the cases. We got here ten minutes ago, but it looks like our guy's gone. We didn't miss him by much, though. There's soup on the stove, and it's still warm," he told them disappointedly. "Maybe you can find something at the scene that'll help us figure out where the guy went. Uniforms are clearing the scene now, but they're almost done. You can start on the first floor. Just don't go into the basement yet. We left it for last."

"Basement?" Nick queried. Almost all of the new construction in the Las Vegas area was built on slabs.

"Go figure. Apparently these houses were built by some east coast development company, and someone in Pittsburg or someplace decided they needed basements. So—don't go down there yet."

"Thanks, Alex." Nick gave a friendly nod to the detective and he and Greg headed into the house. "Damn!" he said under his breath to his young partner. "I thought this was going to wrap the case. So much for the early Christmas present."

"I guess we'll just have to find something here that tells us where to find him."

They paused inside the front door of the small two-storey house and looked around. The house was shabby and unremarkable, sparsely furnished with thrift store furniture. A small kitchen was off to the left and a living room to the right.

"I go left, you go right?" Greg proposed.

"Just don't forget that the basement hasn't been cleared yet. I'm guessing the stairs are off of the kitchen."

"Don't worry, Dad. I'll be careful."

Nick started in the living room, processing as he went. The room was empty except for a couch, big box TV and a coffee table. The current TV Guide sat on the table. He moved from there through the dining room with its card table and one chair, and up the stairs to the second floor. Two uniformed officers heading down to clear the basement passed him on the stairs.

"Hey, Stokes!"

"Hey, Akers, Benson. We good to go?"

"Second floor is all clear."

"Thanks, guys. Greg's downstairs."

"We'll be sure to check under the sink again."

Seven months had passed since his kidnapping, but working alone at crime scenes still gave Nick a bit of a chill. He worked carefully but quickly, his senses all on hyper alert.

Greg finished in the kitchen before the officers had cleared the basement, so, heeding his promise to Nick, he wandered out onto the back stoop to wait. It was late morning, and Greg had gotten almost no sleep in order to be there, but it was a beautiful day, cool and crisp, the desert air golden with winter sun. The backyard was not neat like the inside of the house. Overgrown grasses grew sparsely but tall. A wooden shed stood skewwhiff in the backyard, warped boards pulling away from the tilting frame. A concrete birdbath and overgrown planting bed occupied the opposite corner, remnants, Greg assumed, of a previous tenant. Stretching, he walked down the steps and into the sun. Behind him he heard the officers climbing the stairs from the basement as a man came at him from around the corner of the house. Greg let out a yell as the man barreled into him. His recent Muay Thai workouts had improved his reflexes and he spun away, not fast enough to prevent contact, but enough to keep the attacker from getting a good hold on him. The officers burst out the back door in response to Greg's yell and pointed their weapons at the other man as he rose to his feet, a long shiny silver knife in his hand.

"Drop your weapon!" Karen Benson yelled. For a moment Greg thought the suspect was going to try to flee, but after a brief hesitation he dropped the knife and raised his hands. Benson held a gun on him while Larry Akers put him in handcuffs. It wasn't until he was fully restrained by her partner that Benson lowered her weapon and glanced over at the crime scene investigator.

"Greg! You're bleeding!"

He looked down and saw a swath of bright red blood spreading across his abdomen. He felt suddenly lightheaded, and woozily sat down. Benson rushed to his side as Akers radioed for an ambulance. "Yeah, I've got a 444—officer down. We need a bus!"

Nick heard the shouts and dashed out the back door.

"G!"

Greg looked up at him, his face sweaty and ashen.

"Hey, Nick. Boy, is my Khru Muay going to be disappointed in me," he told him in a forlorn tone as his partner pulled off his own t-shirt and applied pressure to the wound.

"Hey, pal, you could have been killed." He glanced over at the wicked long knife gleaming in the grass. "Your teacher is going to know that your skills saved your life. So, how're you feeling, G?"

"My stomach is starting to burn a little, Nick. You know, I didn't even feel him cut me."

"Sharp blade, adrenaline—you know how it works. But the paramedics are going to be here in a minute, and they'll get you to the hospital so the docs can stitch you up good as new."

Greg looked over at the suspect.

"That the guy, Nick? I mean, the guy we were looking for?"

"Hey, Larry, is that Daniels?" he called over to the officer.

"Sure is, Nick. We got 'em. How's Greg?"

"He's hanging in there, aren't you, G?"

A pair of paramedics came around the corner, medical kits in hand. Hank Peddigrew and Mitchell Fink. Nick's instinctive animosity against the man who'd been two-timing his friend warred with his knowledge that Hank was one of the best.

"Nick," Hank addressed him neutrally.

"Hank, Mitch."

"What've we got?"

"Well, Greg here just missed getting out of the way of a blade that was intending to slice him open. He got a little nick here, and we thought maybe we should get him to the hospital so the docs could put in a stitch or two."

Taking in the blood-soaked t-shirt Nick was holding against Greg's abdomen, Hank opened his kit, pulling out a large sterile gauze as his partner went to work checking the injured man's vitals and starting an IV.

"How're you doing there, Greggo?" Mitch asked.

"Hey, Mitch. Not feeling so good right now."

"I know pal, but we'll get you on the way to the hospital in just a few minutes."

While Mitch kept Greg distracted, Hank indicated that Nick should move the t-shirt. He sprayed the wound with sterile saline to take a quick look at the extent of it, then replaced the shirt with his dressing.

"Nick, think you could get the gurney from the bus and bring it back here?" Hank asked, without looking up from his work.

"Yeah, sure, man." He disappeared around the corner.

Not until Greg was loaded into the ambulance and ready for transport did Hank pause and meet Nick's eyes.

"Nick," he paused at the door of the cab. "How's Sara?"

Nick's eyes hardened and his gaze fell pointedly on the pale gold band circling Peddigrew's left fourth finger then returned to his face. When he spoke, his voice was as icy as his stare.

"That's one question you do not have the right to ask. Now get Greg to the hospital. I'll be right on your tail the whole way."

He called Grissom from the car.

"Gris, Greg got cut by the perp at our scene. He's bleeding pretty good and is on the way to Desert Palms. I'm right behind the ambulance. What? Yeah, he was awake and talking. But there was a lot of blood. Oh, and Gris? Peddigrew is one of the paramedics bringing him in, so you may want to keep Sara away from the hospital long enough for them to sign Greg out to the ER staff."


	39. Chapter 37

**Chapter 37**

* * *

Sara watched Grissom put the phone away. His face revealed nothing of the substance of the call, and yet…

"Gil, what is it?"

"Greg was attacked by the perp at a crime scene. He's on his way to Desert Palm in an ambulance. Nick says he's awake and talking, but I guess he lost a lot of blood."

"So, why are we still standing here? Let's get going."

"Sara," he paused. "One of the paramedics bringing Greg in is Hank Peddigrew. If you'd rather wait a few minutes before we head over…"

Sara looked at him incredulously.

"Gris, I wouldn't care if Scott Shelton were bringing Greg in. Besides, Hank lost the ability to hurt me a long time ago. How about you? Are you going to be okay with it? Because frankly at this point, I think you're a lot more bothered by him than I am."

"Well, I think he's an absolute idiot, and I'd like to kill him for hurting you, but am I sorry with the way everything has turned out? Hardly. What can being around him do to me? I'm the one who got the girl. So let's go take care of our boy."

And together they headed for the parking lot.

The encounter between Sara and Hank Peddigrew was significantly anticlimactic. Grissom and Sara rushed into the ER together, through the ambulance entrance. A tired-looking clerk raised a hand to stop them, but the two investigators charged past without even looking at her. Sara cast her eyes about, settling on her ex-boyfriend who was at the nurses' station finishing his run report.

"Hank! Where's Greg?" she demanded.

He looked up, a pleased look on his face.

"Hey, Sara! How—"

"Where. Is. Greg," she demanded, cutting him off. Any thought Peddigrew had of possibly pursuing his more social approach was squelched by the look in Gil Grissom's eye as he drew up along side Sara. Resigned, he merely pointed at one of the trauma rooms. Without a second's hesitation, Sara and Grissom pivoted and entered the room.

Nick, still shirtless and covered with blood, was standing beside Greg, holding his hand and talking quietly as a surgical resident stood smoothly closing the wound on Greg's flank. A unit of blood was hanging, dripping steadily down through a large bore needle. Greg spotted Sara and his boss as they came through the door.

"Hey, Gris. Hey, Sara."

Absent from the room was the mass of people and flurry of activity which surrounded the seriously ill or wounded, and noting that, Grissom gave a sigh of relief.

"How are ya, G?" Sara asked him.

"He's going to be just fine," the resident answered for him. "It was a pretty deep cut, but didn't penetrate beyond the muscles. Mr. Sanders is going to be sore for a while, but once we get this closed and his blood supply tanked up, he should be good to go. Not literally, of course," she backtracked a little. "I mean, we're going to keep him here for observation overnight at least, but other than some antibiotics and some healing time, he shouldn't need any other interventions. Now," she continued, looking up at them for the first time, "if you don't mind, since you've assured yourselves of his well being, I'd appreciate it if you'd wait in the waiting room. Mr. Stokes has been doing a perfectly fine job of keeping Mr. Sanders company, and I've got enough of an audience."

"Sure, Doc," Sara answered. "We'll be right outside, G. We're not going anywhere."


	40. Chapter 38

**Chapter 38**

* * *

"Do you know what I miss most from when I was living in Massachusetts?" Sara asked idly. They were sitting, shoulder to shoulder, in hard plastic chairs in the emergency room waiting room. Nick was still in with Greg, who was just waiting for a room to become available. Catherine and Warrick had arrived, checked in with Greg and gone in search of coffee.

"Other than just being at Harvard?"

"Yeah, besides that. I mean, being at Berkeley and being at Harvard weren't that different from an academic perspective. But Massachusetts and the Bay Area…"

"Pretty different."

"Definitely." Sara paused, letting her mind wander back. "The only time I've ever lived anywhere with a real winter was when I was at Harvard. So that's the only time I ever experienced a true spring. I mean, I love spring here, and in California, but it doesn't follow months of cold, gray, snowy weather."

"I understand what you mean. I had that experience when I moved to Rogers, Minnesota." Sara nodded vaguely, acknowledging the parallel.

"That's right. You know what I'm talking about."

"So what _was_ your favorite thing?"

"That first day when the ground was finally warm under your feet. The first time you could walk out barefoot and _feel_ the heat seeping up from the sun-warmed earth."

Grissom looked at her, casting his mind back, trying to remember if he had ever experienced that sensation. Sara watched him, reading his thoughts.

"You never walked barefoot, did you?"

"I was working at the Hennepin County Crime Lab. Bare feet were sort of frowned on at crime scenes."

"And on your days off?"

He looked at her blankly.

"You didn't take days off?"

"Sure, but I spent them writing."

"At the crime lab."

"They had better computers than I did at home."

"I'll bet they have that same day in the Colorado mountains. Maybe we can go some year and walk barefoot… It's been awhile since we went away together, at least for fun. In fact, I don't think we've been away overnight, other than going to LA when your mom died, since we went to Phoenix to see Springsteen last spring. What do you think about going to the mountains? Would you like that?"

Grissom thought back to that day, the day after he had finally made love with Sara for the first time, that day when, for the first and only time in his career, he'd called in sick in order to play hooky, when he'd begged a friend who worked at the Glendale Arena for last minute tickets to the long-sold out Springsteen concert (instead receiving back stage passes), and had told Sara only to pack an overnight bag and come, without explaining why or where. It had been one of the most spontaneous moments of his life, and was one of the best memories he had.

"I'd like that very much," he told her, and reached out and gave her hand a quick squeeze.


	41. Chapter 39

**Friday **

**12-23-2005**

* * *

**Chapter 39**

* * *

"What is it with your people, Gil? No one on days ever blows up the lab, gets kidnapped or beaten up! And now knifed! No one on swing gets held at knife point, gunpoint or, heaven forbid, murdered! They don't get shot. They don't have to run from buildings that are about to blow up! You're crime scene investigators, not cops! You're supposed to go in AFTER the scene is cleared. CSIs do NOT have dangerous jobs!" Ecklie paused in his rant to catch his breath. "Is there a SINGLE member of your team who hasn't had his or her life on the line at some point since you took over the night shift?!"

"Nick was on swing when he was kidnapped," Grissom replied reasonably.

Ecklie glared at him.

"He was one of your guys. I could transfer them to New York City and they'd still be your guys."

"Maybe if the other shifts didn't wait QUITE so long after the scenes were cleared, their close rate would come closer to graveyard's."

"Grissom, let me make this clear to you—I do not want ANY more of your team being endangered, at crime scenes or anywhere else. No explosions, no knives, no shooting, no nothings. Do you understand?"

Chapter 40

Typically, Sara was already in the break room awaiting assignments when Nick strode into the room. Glancing at him, Sara again mentally applauded the recent dispatch of his blessedly short-lived mustache, as she had done daily since its demise. 'Some guys,' she thought to herself, 'just shouldn't wear facial hair, while others…'

"Hey, Nick! Any update the Daniels case?"

"Well, they added charges of assaulting a police officer, in addition to the two homicides and twenty-three robberies. I don't think Mr. Daniels will be pulling any more jobs for quite awhile."

"So what was with the sex crime angle? Just trying to cover his tracks?" Sara asked curiously.

"No, just misinterpretation on our part. There was no sex angle."

"Nick, the victims both had their pants and underwear down around their ankles!"

"It wasn't sex he was after, but control. Figured if their pants were half way off, they wouldn't be able to run. And it looks like he was right." Nick sighed, and shook his head. "Wish we'd not been so thrown off by that, though. If we'd approached this as a straightforward robbery from the beginning, we might have made the connection to the earlier break ins, and we might have saved Hiram Hirsch's life."

"And if you hadn't figured out the common thread between THESE two murders, then sooner or later someone else would have died. You can't beat yourself up over stuff that's beyond your control, Nicky. Most of the time when you hear hoof beats in a stable, it's a horse, not a zebra."

"Sara darlin', in this job, sometimes I feel like most of the time when we hear hooves in the barn, it's a Nilgai."


	42. Chapter 40

**Saturday 12-24-2005**

* * *

**Chapter 40**

* * *

"Hey, Gris?" Nick spoke from the doorway to his supervisor's office at the end of shift early Christmas Eve morning.

"Yeah, Nick? You off to pick up Greg?"

"I am. I just called to make sure everything was set for him to go home, and he wanted to know if the team was still going out for breakfast. I told him I'd check."

Grissom stared at him blankly.

"Breakfast?"

Nick's heart fell. He'd been looking forward to Christmas Eve breakfast with the team. In past years he'd negotiated time off around the holidays to go home and spend time with his family, but this year not only had he used up most of his available leave following his abduction, he'd spent a chunk of that time at home where the care his family took around him drove him crazy. While he missed seeing his nieces and nephews, he wasn't ready to jump back into that quite yet. Catherine and Warrick had both invited him to spend Christmas day with their families, but while he'd appreciated the offers more than his friends could possibly know, he'd declined the invitations. He'd thought about asking Sara if she wanted to get a pizza and go to a movie, but the logistics with him working Christmas Eve and her Christmas Day seemed more complicated than he wanted to deal with.

"Yeah. We talked about it a few weeks ago, remember?"

Grissom relied entirely on Sara to remember that sort of thing for him, but he could hardly say as much to Nick. Sara never forgot anything. Almost never. No, actually, he couldn't think of a single time when she had. As he struggled with a response that wasn't going to make him look like a complete idiot and loser, his savior walked up behind their co-worker.

"Hey, Nick!"

"Hey, Sara."

"Nick was just asking if we were still going out to breakfast this morning," Grissom prompted her, his deer-in-the-headlights look cluing her in to the fact that he had had absolutely no memory of the casual conversation they'd all had when the shift schedule was first posted.

Sara turned to Nick. The gathering had actually been her idea, something Grissom was just now remembering, but that was before their team member had been injured.

"Aren't you picking up Greg from the hospital?"

"Yeah, and he wants to go to breakfast, if everyone else is up for it."

Sara glanced back at Grissom, crooking an eyebrow. He met her gaze straight on. Whatever she decided was fine with him.

"Well, I'm up for it. Check with Catherine and Warrick—they may want to get home. How about you, Grissom? Want to go get breakfast?"

He gazed at them thoughtfully, pretending to consider the decision.

"If the team is going, breakfast sounds good."

Nick caught up with Catherine and Warrick in the locker room.

"Tina's working nights; she'll be asleep already," Warrick answered his query. "So breakfast sounds like a good idea. It'll keep me from waking her up banging around in the kitchen."

Nick looked over at Catherine.

"Mom and Lindsey are going Christmas tree shopping this morning. Decorating it Christmas Eve is an old family tradition. They won't be home for hours. And I'm starving!"

"Okay, then," Nick responded with a huge grin. "We're on. I'll go get Greg and meet you at Frank's."

Greg moved stiffly and carefully as he made his way to the table where his colleagues were sitting. They'd left the most accessible seat available for him and he slid into it gratefully with Nick's assistance. Greg'd been so afraid his injuries would cancel this breakfast he'd been looking forward to for weeks. Unlike Nick, the other team member with distant family, Greg had no reservations about spending the holidays with his clan, and had plane tickets home for Christmas morning. Grissom had approved his week long vacation months ago, and he'd planned to take off right after his Christmas Eve shift. His doctor had been reluctant to grant permission for him to make the flight, but in the end had done so grudgingly after Greg convinced her that he'd get far more TLC at home with his family than if he stayed in town. But he valued these people equally, and to have headed off without getting to wish them all a Merry Christmas, especially when he was feeling as big an idiot as he was over getting hurt, well, that would have sucked. And especially when he'd been working on the little gifts he had for everyone for months. Luckily, he'd already had them secreted in his locker, so Nick had been able to bring them for him.

"Greg," Grissom greeted him from the back of the booth where he sat next to Sara, "How are you feeling?"

"Pretty good, Gris. Thanks."

"Gave us a scare there, Greggo," Catherine followed. "Don't do that again."

He flashed her wan grin. "I'll do my best, Catherine."

"Are you still going to be able to go home?" Sara asked.

"Yeah, I got the okay from my doc, so I fly out tomorrow morning."

Sara nodded her acknowledgement of his relief at the medical verdict and reached under the table for a small bag from which she distributed a candy cane to each of her colleagues.

"Merry Christmas everybody. "

Nick dug into the backpack he'd had slung over his shoulder and pulled out tiny stockings stuffed with candy that he also passed around the table.

"Cool. Thanks, bro!" Warrick exclaimed as he dug into a mini-box of Jordan almonds. "And Catherine, thanks for the Starbucks card. God knows I can always use coffee!" Unsure whether the team was going to get together, she had left her holiday cards in each of her teammates' lockers.

"My turn," Greg bubbled, excitement gleaming in his eyes. "Nick?" The Texan handed over his backpack, still half-full of the gaily wrapped gifts he'd gotten from Greg's locker. Greg dug around, then handed one back to Nick. "This one is yours."

Nick opened it warily, aware as they all were that Greg's idea of an appropriate gift might be nice, or might be dangerous or embarrassing. Relief flooded into his eyes as he saw what his friend had gotten him. The flat box contained a gift certificate for Famous Dave's BBQ in Summerlin.

"Thanks, Greg. Really."

"I know it's not _**Texas**_ barbeque, but it's still supposed to be good."

"I've heard that too. I meant to go when they opened, but…"

Greg grinned at Nick, glad his first attempt appeared to be a success.

Greg dug around in the bag again. "Who's next? Sara—this is for you."

She looked at him hesitantly.

"Greg, we've always said, I mean, we're not supposed to…"

"Yeah, I know, no gifts except for Lindsey, but after what happened to Nick last spring," he looked at his friend apologetically, then continued, "well, I just wanted to let you guys know that you're important to me." He handed over a flat package.

"Hmmm," Sara said thoughtfully, turning it over in her hand and studying it, "Looks like a CD."

Greg rolled his eyes.

"Open it already, would you?"

Sara pulled off the wrapping and smiled widely when she saw the title.

"Greg! How did you know? I've wanted to get this album forever!"

"I didn't know, I guessed. You seem like a Dusty Springfield fan. Rolling Stone listed it as one of the top 100 best albums of all time, there aren't a whole lot of female performers on the list, and I know you already have Joni Mitchell's _Blue_… Plus I thought you'd enjoy the irony that _Dusty in Memphis_ was recorded in New York City."

"Thanks, Greg. I love it."

"And for Warrick…" Greg passed him his present. The Las Vegas native tore the wrapping off of the flat package without hesitation, then stared at the DVD he held in his hand. Looking at Greg, he asked, "How did—"

"I had a hard time trying to figure out what to get for you, and then I overheard you and Nick in the hall." He blushed faintly. "I love _Shall We Dance_ too. I thought it was something you and Tina would enjoy watching together."

Warrick's hand met Greg's in a fist bump. "Thanks, Man. Really."

Greg looked back into the backpack. "Let's see..." He pulled out a card and handed it to Catherine. She looked at it curiously.

"I figured this was the one thing you could use more than any other," he told her. She flashed him a slightly suspicious look.

"The one thing I could use more than any other. Hmmm…" She opened the envelope and read the card, then sat quietly staring at it. When she looked up at Greg, she had tears in her eyes.

"Thank you, Greg. Thank you." The rest of the team looked at her, and wordlessly she handed the card to Warrick, who was sitting next to her. Warrick read it, looked at Greg warmly and passed it on to Sara.

"Good work, Greggo."

"Sara!" Nick, who was sitting next to Greg and would have been last to see the card, demanded as she got her turn reading it.

"Greg, he--Greg gave Catherine a certificate to cover any one day she wanted off to spend with Lindsey."

Nick met his eyes warmly.

"Good job, G."

Pleased by how well his selections seemed to be going over, Greg dug into the bag for the gift he was least sure of.

"Grissom, this is for you. As you know, I grew up sailing, so this is supposed to remind you of me, a little. I mean, not the subject, just…"

Grissom cocked his head, considering. The thought of a gift meant to remind him of Greg was a bit frightening, but he'd been impressed by Greg's selections so far and was more than a little curious to see what the youngest member of the team thought would be an appropriate gift for his boss. Greg proffered a wrapped book, and Grissom held it motionlessly for a moment before unwrapping it. The book inside was clearly used, old and leather bound. Grissom simply stared at it for a moment until he felt Sara's fingers gently squeeze his thigh, reminding him of their audience. He looked up and met Greg's uncertain gaze.

"I found it at a church yard sale," Greg explained.

Grissom quoted:

"_The moving moon went up the sky,_

_And no where did abide:_

_Softly she was going up,_

_And a star or two beside - _

_Her beams bemocked the sultry main,_

_Like April hoar-frost spread;_

_But where the ship's huge shadow lay,_

_The charmed water burnt alway_

_A still and awful red."_

He looked at the younger man. "_The Rime of the Ancient Mariner_. I'm impressed that you know it, Greg." His junior investigator squirmed a little.

"I'd claim it was the result of my Stanford education, but Douglas Adams talked about it a lot in _Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency_," he admitted, "and that made me curious. Kind of a depressing poem, but beautiful too, you know?"


	43. Chapter 41

**Chapter 41**

* * *

In Grissom's absence, Catherine gathered the contracted team for assignments.

"Well, the good news, since there are only three of us, is that so far we've only got one case, so we'll work it together. If something else comes up we call peel off as necessary, all right?"

"Sounds like a plan," Nick replied. Warrick nodded his head in agreement. "What do we have?"

"It's a 419, possible 401A on the 169 east."

"Hit and run, huh? Well, let's go see if we can find the bastard…"

Jim Brass and Sofia Curtis were waiting at the scene, huddled in heavy coats against the cutting winter wind, at a sharp curve on the Valley of Fire Highway. The LVPD had set up spotlights which cast dark shadows, and the rotating lights on squad cars and rescue vehicles bathed the scene in alternating red and blue.

"Hey, guys," Brass greeted them. "We've got another weird one."

"Oh, yeah?" asked Nick. "What a surprise…"

"Come see." The detectives led the way to a body which lay sprawled ten feet from where a scuffed up new fire-engine red Harley-Davidson Screamin' Eagle V-Rod Destroyer lay on its side. Nick glanced at the bike and whistled.

"NICE ride," he commented.

"The way we initially figured it," Sofia began, "he was cruising along at high speed and lost control of the bike, flipping over the handle bar and landing on his head."

"Happens every day," Catherine commented. "Why are we here then?"

"Well," Brass responded, "there are a couple of pieces that don't fit."

"Like?"

"Well, for one thing, David wasn't sure he died of a head or neck injury. He thinks he might have exsanguinated."

"Bled to death? From what? A splenic rupture?" Catherine queried.

"Not exactly." He played his flashlight over the body where a dark pool had collected between the victim's legs.

"Wow! That's a lot of blood! Where's it from? Has David been here?"

"Yeah, he cleared the body and was waiting for you in his truck. One of the uniforms went to tell him you're here."

"Hi, guys," the assistant coroner walked to the team from the cluster of vehicles parked at the side of the road, blowing on his hands to warm them.

"Hey, Super Dave. Cold enough for you?"

"And to think I moved to Vegas for the heat!" David Phillips replied. "But while my package may be feeling a little—small--right now, at least it's still attached."

"As opposed to?"

"Our friend on the ground here." He bent over and adjusted the corpse, revealing a long tear through the crotch of his jeans. Dave spread the sides of the tear open, revealing a large, bloody gaping wound. Catherine leaned over and peered at the injury.

"So where--?"

"Is the rest of him? I haven't found it."

"And THAT," added Brass, "is why you're all here."

"You think some one…?"

"It looks that way, doesn't it? And whoever it was didn't use a very sharp knife."

Warrick winced. "I'm going to take the periphery, guys."

One of the great difficulties of working the graveyard shift is simply that, no matter how good your lighting is, it's hard to see. Which is why it took nearly an hour of scouring the scene before they finally found what they were looking for.

"Oh, God!" Nick exclaimed. "Oh, God! David! Over here! I've heard about this, but I never thought…" He'd been examining the motorcycle when he noticed a dark mass caught in the handle bar. Shining the beam of his high intensity flashlight on it curiously, he suddenly realized what he was looking at. David hurried over at Nick's call.

"Nick, what—oh."

"I think we can now safely say that no foul play was involved in the death of our victim," a slightly pale Nick commented. "Reason number 342 not to ride 'donorcycles'."

"I read a case report about this happening once," David exclaimed, "but I'd never really believed it."

"You going to write up this one?"

"We'll make sure the autopsy supports what we think we're seeing first, but—a man loses control of his motorcycle on an empty stretch of winding desert road in the middle of the night, runs off the asphalt, hits a rock, is catapulted off of the bike, as he flies over the handlebars his genitalia get caught and ripped clean off of the body, he lands in what was otherwise a survivable fall, and bleeds to death from the ruptured common pudendal artery? You'd better believe I'm going to write it up!"


	44. Chapter 42

**Chapter 42**

* * *

"You first," Sara offered as she held out a brightly wrapped envelope, then watched quietly as Grissom took it and looked at it curiously. He opened the wrapping carefully, pulling out certificates with little gray alien heads on them.

"I hesitated to get them," Sara confessed with a smile as he stared down at season passes for the 51s. "I mean, come on, 57 and 86 this last season? That's a .399 percentage for goodness sake! But I figure most of the time, if we want, we can sleep, catch a game and still make it from Cashman field to the lab in plenty of time for shift."

Grissom looked at her, remembering her first response when he'd told her so many years before that he liked baseball. They'd been sitting in the bleachers staring at an ice rink where a member of the team the Rat Pack had died on the ice during a hockey game.

"_Two minutes for elbowing. Four minutes for high sticking. Ten minutes, unsportsman-like conduct," he'd mused._

"_Boys will be boys." _

"_Yeah, sounds like these boys went to a fight and a hockey game broke out." _

"_You just don't like sports."_

"_That's not true-- I've been a baseball fan my whole life."_

"_Baseball. Well, that figures. All those stats."_

"_It's a beautiful game."_

"_Since when are you interested in beauty?"_

"_Since I met you."_

His comment had stunned her into silence, trying not to hope, not to read too much into it, hating him for once again tossing her a bone he wouldn't, couldn't, follow up on. He, in contrast, had felt almost giddy at the admission. He'd told her a little of how he felt, and the world hadn't opened up beneath his feet to swallow him. And then the reality of the situation had swept back over the two of them, and then they'd gone back to work. Willing enough to ride with him, Sara had never come to really understand the freedom he felt on roller coasters, but she _had_ come to share his love of baseball. And the 51s.

"I know we won't be able to make a lot of the games, but I figure you can give the tickets away, if you want. They have an 'unused ticket day' for season ticket holders at the end of the season. Maybe you can take a group from the lab." She was over-talking, unusually uncertain of his reaction to the gift.

"Sara, hush. I love them! I can't wait for Opening Day! Thank you!" He then reached under the tree, pulling out a small package wrapped in paper with a pine tree pattern.

"And this is for you." He held it out, his eyes brimming with excitement. Sara took the box carefully and paused before opening it.

"Go on, open it," he urged gently. "It won't bite."

She looked up and met his gaze.

"I don't remember getting a real Christmas present before. Other than the entomology text you gave me. I mean, office Secret Santa gifts and that sort of thing, generic stuff so I had something to open when I was in foster care, but not a real present, that someone picked out for me. I suppose I must have when I was a little kid, but…" Her eyes welled up.

"Hey, hey," he said, moving close to her, putting an arm around her shoulders and tucking her in tight against him. "Don't cry, honey."

"I'm so glad to be spending Christmas here with you," she told him softly.

"Open the present, Sara," he replied with a smile.

Smiling back at him, eyes still glistening with tears, she peeled the wrapping off of the package. Inside there was a large envelope. She looked up at him curiously, then opened it. Inside were two plane tickets and a card. Sara opened the tickets.

"Boston?" she asked excitedly. She opened the card, which featured the Newbury Guest House on the cover.

"It just so happens that we both have off the same five day block coming up. You, incidentally, requested the days off to go visit friends in San Francisco, in case anyone asks. I'm supposed to be presenting at a conference which just happens to have been cancelled. So, rather than redoing the schedule…"

"You thought we might as well just leave it the way it is," Sara finished his comment with a smile.

"I want to walk with you in the snow in Boston, Sara. I want you to show me your Cambridge. And," he added with a grin, "I'd really like to go on a Fenway Park tour."


	45. Chapter 43

**Sunday 12-25-2005**

**Christmas Day**

* * *

**Chapter 43**

* * *

To Grissom's great delight, Christmas Day was just as dead as Sara had predicted. He'd decided to run the lab on with a skeleton crew, with others on call if needed, so literally the only people working were himself, Sara, Hodges and Wendy. And they had nothing to do. Benchley was still in the wind, but the crime labs' part of the investigation was over, at least until the suspect was in custody. Grissom tried working on paperwork for awhile, but just couldn't concentrate on what he was doing. He knew Sara, Hodges and Wendy had headed off to do some organizing in their respective labs, but as each lab was cleaned and restocked at the end of each shift, it wasn't a labor-intensive project. Finally giving up on his quarterly employee evaluations, he headed to the break room where surely someone had started a pot of coffee. He was nearing the door when he heard Christmas music spilling out into the hall.

Entering the break room, he found that Jim Brass and David Phillips had joined his little holiday team of three, and that they, Sara and the lab rats were starting to lay out a dinner spread on the break room table. Sara saw him as he entered the room, and flashed him a smile.

"I was going to come get you in a little while, but I figured since you were the only one of us being at all productive, I'd let you work a little longer. At least until we were all set up."

"I'm not being productive," he admitted. "I'm just staring at the same papers over and over again." He looked around at all the activity. "So, what's up?"

"Well," Sara explained, "Wendy and I had been talking about this last week, and we decided if we were going to have to be at work on Christmas night, we could at least have a decent dinner. We divided up the menu, and voila!"

"I would have brought something," he told her softly, moving closer.

"Don't worry," she replied. "I brought plenty for both of us. And I kind of wanted it to be a surprise."

Curious, he looked over at the table. In lieu of typical holiday potluck food, what was on the table was a traditional Christmas dinner. Wendy had brought actual plates for the meal, and though the champagne was alcohol free, it looked plenty festive in David Phillip's flutes. Jim Brass was setting candles up in between the plates of food. And at the head of the red cloth clad table, Dave Hodges was uncovering a platter with a perfectly done roast.

"My grandmother's recipe," he announced proudly.

Sara pulled a serving bowl out of the microwave.

"Yorkshire pudding," she told him.

And the food continued to be produced and uncovered. Scalloped oysters and a sweet potato Brule from Dave Phillips, low man on the four forensic pathologist totem pole, and hence destined to work the biggest holidays (the Brule was sent by his fiancé, he told everyone proudly). Asparagus, and a bowl of cold cheese tortellini with tomatoes in pesto from Sara. Mashed potatoes with gravy and Snowball Christmas cookies ("my mom's recipe") from Brass. And from Wendy, a marzipan frosted, rum impregnated, fruit and nut laden Christmas cake. The others fell silent and simply gazed as she brought it to the table.

"My great grandmother was English. We used to go to spend Christmas with her in Northumbria when I was little. She always made her Christmas cake. Like David said about his oysters, wherever I am, it's the thing that makes it Christmas for me."

"Wow," said Hodges, finally breaking the silence. "Wendy—you can cook!" He paused, then continued, "and for that matter, who knew Sara could cook?!"

Grissom shot her a private smile before responding.

"That shouldn't surprise you, David. Most scientists are good cooks. After all, cooking is little more than applied chemistry. Now, what do you say we all turn down the lights, sit and eat? This looks delicious."

A few minutes later, looking out from the head of the table, at this candle lit rag-tagged group of those of his colleague who'd been unable to avoid working this night, listening to their joking comradery, it occurred to Grissom that there really was nowhere else on earth he'd rather be. Sara, sitting next to him, playing footsie under the table, had managed not only to bring the team together for a holiday meal, and create a delicious, intimate, celebratory meatless dinner for Christmas eve, but had now also evoked the holiday dinners of his childhood, and in a setting where he didn't feel bad about eating meat despite her presence. Also, by organizing this event with those working tonight instead of just their own team, she reminded him that in fact the family he had created for himself since coming to Las Vegas was a larger one, brought together by chance, but cemented into a community by a shared purpose and moments like this one. For someone who claimed holidays weren't that important to her, she was damned good at making them special.

Pressing gently against Sara's foot to get her attention, he met her eye. With a message meant only for her, unnoticed by the rest of the gathering, all busy passing dishes and filling their plates, he whispered, "Thank you." And Sara's answering smile told him everything he needed to know. There was nowhere she'd rather be either.

FIN


End file.
